The zebra mbuna has a single dorsal fin with sixteen to nineteen spines and seven to ten soft rays.

The pectorals have brown rays and clear membranes, and the black pelvic fins have white leading edges.

[3] The zebra mbuna is endemic to Lake Malawi where it is found in rocky areas, both where there is sediment and where the rock is bare[1] at depths between 6 and 28 m (20 and 92 ft).

[2] The zebra mbuna largely feeds on aufwuchs, an algae-based community of organisms adhering to rock surfaces.

It holds its body at right angles to the rock and presses its mouth against the surface, repeatedly opening and closing it, and these actions scrape off the loose aufwuchs which it then ingests.

[6] A second, independent draft genome was also published in 2014[7] and subsequently improved upon in 2015 with Pacific Biosciences single-molecule real-time sequencing.