Out of your element ? Not at all - you'll love 'em and your experience wil stand you in good stead.
Leaving aside the Lake Victorian species and focusing on Tangs & Malawis a bit so :
Malawis are more aggressive, pound for pound, than new world species. You need to manage breeding, territorial and con-specific aggression and the techniques are quite different to new world.
Breeding aggression is managed by either keeping no females, or keeping at least 2 or 3 females of each species kept for each male, often referred to as harem stocking. A lone female will be permanently harassed and perhaps stressed to death by her suitors. More females spreads the males out. As a general rule, if you keep any females, keep enough females for each male, as they will cross-breed outside of genus, or attempt to.
Con-specific aggression - the little blighters know what colour they are although no one has ever told them this. A blue fish is likely to hate the sight of other blue fish of the same gender, especially between males. This is managed by a) having a large enough tank to allow beaten fish withdraw after a brief chase and b) overstocking significantly as discussed further below. Broadly speaking a four foot in length tank is considered minimum, and the length dimension is far more important than height when selecting tank. A standard shape 55 is perfect for a nice stocking.
Territorial aggression - the buggers get very fixated on a given rock or other. In the wild, a mbuna (more below) may decide to claim a metre square as his feeding/breeding spot, chasing off all non-female interlopers. This is impossible to accomodate in terms of space for most home aquarists and hence the over-stocking technique developed. Rather counter intuitively you put in loads more than the tank seems to bear. This prevents any given fish from feeling an entitlement to a territory and also keeps all of them 'on edge' somewhat. The balance to strike is that no one fish claims the tank, and no one fish is the focus of all aggression within the tank. A constantly shifting pecking order is desirable, although there will be one or two bosses in every set-up.
The above basically applies in respect of all malawis. Within the malawi species you have three broadly recognised distinct groups :
-Mbuna
- Peacocks (Aulonocara)
- Larger Haplochromine (haps)
In fact Peacocks are also haps, but they max out around 6 inches whereas the haps can go over a foot it full, healthy size.
Peacocks are generally considered to be somewhat less aggressive than mbuna. Larger Haps are aggressive too and require extremely large tanks to accomodate them successfully, although you can slip e.g. a proteus 'red empress' type into a peacock type set up with success.
That said, most commonly available fish are either mbuna or peacock so a good starting point is to be able to recognise the difference between the two as in general, when starting out, you want to stock either one or the other.
Mbuna - the name means 'rock dweller' are a group of highly adapted smaller fish which typically inhabit the rocky inshore shallows of the lake. Their diet consists of micro-organisms and algae which they graze off the rocks. Mbuna tend to be more elongated than Peacocks, lack the large finnage which gives Peacocks their common name and may have a sort of 'primary colour' scheme - i.e. they are predominantly one colour, or are bold striped. Their eyes are less bulbous and their mouths are proportionately smaller as well. Your zebras, labs and socolofi are mnbuna.
Peacocks - its the dramatic finnage and bulbous eyes that are typical. Do a google search and you'll see what I'm on about directly.
Larger Haps - they look far more like Peacocks than they do mbuna, although a lot of people get caught out by crytocara moorii ('blue dolphins') which are a bit mbunaish in appearance. This can be a wee bit unfortunate as these in particular are very docile fish unsuited to the organised mayhem of a mbuna tank.
As regards Tangs, the approach tends to be quite different. With a lot of species, you introduce juvies but when a pair forms remove all but the pair within each species stocked. Tropheus however are like mbuna only more so - you keep 1 or 2 males with 8 or more females - tropheus keepers often refer to their 'colony' (incidentally this is also how you stock pseudotropheus demasoni - a psycho mbuna species). You also stock Frontosa (a very large and docile tang) in harems - very very large tanks required - they hit a foot in size). It is much harder to make generalisations in respect of stocking tangs - jpappy (one of our very helpful members on here) is your man for that sort of info.
Back to Malawis :
Say in a standard shape 55 I would aim for 4 or 5 groups of 3 or 4 fish each. Good species to look out for :
Labidochromis caereulus - you have these already. They also come in a nice blue variety and a pretty striking white one.
Pseudotropheus Socolofi - again you have these already. They also come in a very attractive albino variant.
Pseudotropheus Acei - come in a purple with yellow fin, and a very dark Blue/Black with white fin - both are really nice.
Iodotropheus Sperengae (Rusties) - these and labs are often considered the most docile mbuna. If you stock them it can be a good idea to make them the largest group in the tank (say 5 if other groups are 3 or 4) and introduce them first.
Labidochromis Hongi - if you can get these, they are genuine little stunners.
Cynotilapia afra - pretty agro but stay quite small...personal little fave of mine.
These are basically the fish I reccomend when you're starting out with mbuna.
Fish to avoid...personal choices - melanochromis auratus; these are your basic psychopath and pseudotropheus crabro (more controversial - some people like 'em, I believe them to be nothing but your average 'drunk in a bar' jerk and they get bigger than the average hence can wreck a tank). Both are very attractive as juveniles, very unattractive at adult stage, and severely tempermentally disturbed.
There is nothing to stop you however putting in some zebras, or some kenyi (pseudotropheus lombardoi) or saulosi or any amount of a whole load of others. Broadly speaking those species which are referred to as metriaclimia (a lot now reclassified as Pseudotropheus) are considered to be a level of aggression up from the more placid ones mentioned above. If you had these, you would consider not stocking rusties...and perhaps not the labidochromis genus, although I think the latter would be fine in increased numbers.
Diet for all malawis should be a good cichlid pellet (New Life Spectrum is brilliant) supplemented with spirulina flake/pellet and/or blanched green veggies.
Bottom dwellers for malawis - synodontis catfish have what it takes to live with them. Best in groups of 3 or more from personal experience (I found pairs of males to hassle each other and I don't know how to tell males from females doh!). Bristlenose plecos are successful more often than they are not. Prettty much same applies for tangs (there are lots of synos from lake tanganyika) but I think jpappy will tell you bristlenose plecos are less likely to work here.
If you can get a fire eel and a big enough tank there is a native tang species can't remember the name which goes well with peaceful tangs.
OK that's basically some off-the-top of my head stuff which might feed further discussion lol. The main differences aside from diet (one other thing - no blood worms for africans - big no-no between your africans and your new world guys are probably the harem groupings for breeding and the overstocking. Often the solution to a hyper-dominant fish is to add more fish as opposed to removing tank mates.
Which brings me to the final thing for the moment - filtration - you want heaps of it.
You can sex mbuna at about 3 inches give or take - technique called venting requires removing the fish from the tank (I will find a link) or otherwise by appearance you sort of generally see a slightly smaller fish with less egg-spots on its anal fin and there are some nuanced differences in colouration with socolofi. Only way to be sure is probably venting.
Right...people will probably disagree with aspects of what I said but as a broad overview this is a starting point
