hey mostlycichlids is correct, all you have to do is google a certain species and you will attain alot of helpfull info for that fish, the thing is with africans wether its mbuna, tanganyika's or west african species they are all aggressive and really aggressive in the small confines of a tank so i would say bare minimum would be a 30gal for a group of smaller africans at 3" 5 total of one species will work, if you want alot of diversity of different african cichlids you will need to get the largest tank possibly you could afford the 125gal you stated earlier in this post will most def be the best choice for you with the length it will make for an awesome tank and your imagination is the limit on aquascaping it would be fun for you, as for inverts most africans eat these things and those inverts as lobsters are truely crayfish from different parts of the world there isnt a true freshwater lobster like the ones you eat at red lobster, hehehe, its a markup theme from petshops, now i have seen some huge crayfish and i think they taste just like lobster well i buy some from meijers all the time and they are tastey aye, but in an aquarium they will eat or kill smaller fish if they can catch them there are some hobbyist that will keep them in the tanks with fish and it may at times work but those are the ones that are in a pretty large setups and have tons of places to hide from aggression, honestly i hold true to having inverts in a tank to themselves and only having certain lake cichlids to a system like all mbuna in a tank or all tanganyika's in a tank, what is it that you have right now in fish, tank and inverts are all of these in one tank right now or do you have them in different tanks, hey also since you live close to me are you a member of our fish club in louisville called LTFF if not you can become a member we have all sorts of hobbyists in our club from live bearers to cichlids some are old some are young and we have children there as well we have a meeting once a month every second sunday of the month with a guest speaker that specializes in a certain catagory of aquarium fish tomorrow we have our meeting and our speaker is from goliad farms out of texas he specializes in livebearers and the end of each meeting we have a mini auction on fish and equipment i will be donating some juvie Melanochromis chipokae mbuna 3 of them and others bring in some stuff they breed as well for BAP points if your interested in attending it is located at the bon air library the address is 2816 del rio place louisville, ky near the bon air shopping center start time is 7:30pm tomorrow sunday you will not be obligated to join or pay anything in member dues til you decide if it is for you than i believe the member dues are like 10 dollars a year for membership my name is mcmichael all you have to do is ask for me and i will introduce you to the club and its a friendly club no swearing or drinking just an old fashion family oriented fish club, i hope you have the time to check it out if not its understandable and every second sunday you could check it out there you will get hands on information and we have a yahoo talk group were we all stay in touch with, take care my friend i hope to see a new face at our club..
