getting algae to grow

Harvest it. Set up a tub or jar with water from a change, and put it some rocks or wood. Sit this in a window sill, and give it some time. The algae will grow happily, and you can cycle the rocks/wood into the tank for the fish to graze on, then back to the window for regrowth. This way you can feed ammonia and fertilizers at levels you wouldn't want in your main tank.

I would head over to a cichlid forum for the best methods for Mbuna but I believe it might be difficult to keep any plantlife alive in a tank of Mbuna being the vegetarians they are. The quantity of algae you could grow in all but a stock tank probably wouldn't be much more than a snack for more than a couple Mbuna anyway. I would lean more towards raising duckweed. It is virtually immortal and will out-reproduce guppies given the right water/lighting. You could set up a tub somewhere inside or outside (be sure to use mosquito prevention of some sort like killifish) and place some duckweed in there. I have duckweed growing on several of my tanks and it will literally cover the surface of a 5-20 gallon within a week. I grab a netfull whenever it gets really dense and feed it to my rainbows and they love it. I've also started bagging some for my parents goldfish pond when my tanks get really covered. The one tank that seems to outgrow all of them is a peat substrate 5.5 gallon that has a 4' shoplight suspended over it and neighboring tanks and has about 8 or 9 nothos (killifish). the duckweed goes from a spoonfull to a dense carpet in just a few days. Kyle