Hello again everyone. Well, about 6 months ago, my girlfriend and I moved and had to give up almost all our fish except a pleco and 2 clown loaches. Now we are engaged and after months of searching, just bought our first house, so it is time to get back to our aquarium. As you can see from our profile pics, we used to have a nicely planted tank, but they sadly died during the move.

Anyway, we are looking for any suggestions regarding African Cichlids (just the common ones labeled African Cichlids at Pet Stores). What kinds of fish, if any, have you kept alongside cichlids? I know they can be vicious, but maybe joining them with some decent sized schoolers when they are smaller will calm them down. Look forward to hearing from you all.

I wouldnt buy from tanks labelled african cichlids unless the fish are listed, that way you know what you're getting. Also, it isnt reccomended to mix lake malawi fish(like mbuna) with Tanganyikan fish like (lamprologus), mbuna are really aggressive and energetic and will outwork the other fish for food.

African cichlids come from three different lakes in Africa, all with different types of fish and water tempraments(Malawi, Tanganyika, and Victoria, there are more lakes in Africa but the fish in the aquarium hobby are from these lakes). Most A. Cichlids in LFSs are from malawi (mbuna, peacocks, haps) but there will also be fish from lake Tang. and a little more rarely Lake Victoria.

For Lake Tanganyika there are schooling fish often kept, usually cyprichromis, paracyprichromis or xenotilapia. Some are absolutely beautiful so if you do lake tang I'd reccomend getting some. Some people use rainbowfish or danios as dithers in their african tanks.

You will definately experience aggression, so giving the fish room to swim and giving males adequate numbers of females will often reduce aggression(or at least spread the aggression over a few fish instead of one).

HTH a little, and welcome back to the hobby.