Questions about African Cichlids

salt i would say na just get crused coral or you can get this sand for africans increases gh kh all that fun stuff africans are great just very aggressive but for a 125 they will be fine just make sure to got lots of rock piles in there they love to dig to

You can use a bunch of ways to buffer your water, use crushed coral as substrate as suggested, any aragonite based sand or gravel, you can also run it in your filter and use a substrate of your choice (sand, colorquartz, etc..), you can use rift lake salts or make your own buffer (there's a recipe on cichlidforum.com), personally I'd go with using crushed coral in either manner, that way your chemistry is stable and you don't have to test it as much as when you're buffering it with salts, chemical buffers or baking powder.

There are also a lot of african species which stay relatively mild in aggression, not all are psycho fish.

you really need to determine your source water chemistry before you do anything to it...

test it for kH, gH, pH and then let us know - you can then be well advised on any need to change the chemistry

my kH and gH are less than 1 to 2 degrees from the tap - very soft - so i do add salts (no sodium chloride, epsom and gypsum salts) - we can help if you share your tap water parameter

sometimes there is no need to do anything

No need for salt.

I keep them in Ph 7.6 (7 from the tap buffered up with Crushed Coral substrate) and moderate/soft water - no issues with colouration. Probably would be better at higher Ph 7 & Hardness if trying to breed. Main thing, once your Ph is not below 7, is stability.

I lucked out with hard water and a high pH (above 8) but in reality anything above 7.6 is fine and even moderately hard water will give you good results. If you are getting captive bred fish they will not be too picky about the water...

I am running water of 8.2 hardness and they love it, I did mine with some pieces of limestone.