.................
BTW, noone keeps Mbuna or Hap as a solitary pet, always in a group. So you never know if they will interact with the owner as they are too busy watching one another.
A few years ago, purely ignorant, we got 2 baby mbuna from my lfs for an empty 20G. One is a male kenyi, & the other resembles a female, so you can imagine how quickly the violence unfolded. kenyi=devil fish. the poor little blue guy was gonna get killed, so I put a divider in "until we decided Who was Going Back to store".
They began sparring through the divider & both love it so much that we kept both fish.
The kenyi is named Fin Laden for terrorizing & attacking EVERYthing, including my hands.
BUT he has eventually developed the most personality & YES: consistent interaction through the glass of all our fish. he gets better with time. Now he wags, jumps & bumps glass toward my husband. his head above water for food is the least of his character.
He definitely recognizes and distinguishes between us, behaving differently for each, as well as our 3 yr old grandson :-/ who we permit feeding some pellets.
He isn't like that with strangers. when my visiting brother approached, he hid in his cave for the first time
in ages. would not eat with him standing nearby.
Fin Laden is a very active, personable fish. highly interactive toward family. and he is sharper than most. perhaps without the normally large numbers of other fish to "keep an eye on" and concentrate on, they have more brainpower left to focus on out-of-tank inhabitants. (that is my personal theory)
? If I could only keep one small tank, it'd be his. and when he dies we'll get another. we did hate him at first, though!
BTW, little Bluey, the other mbuna is also interactive. not aggressive or glass banger:
a broken man. lol. he hurls water out of tank at most feedings though, sometimes quite a distance.