New to cichlids, tankmate help?

I have male peacocks in a standard 55 gallon, 4 ft. long tank. It can be challenging, since peacocks are territorial and occupy the same level in the tank, which can lead to problems if there's not enough space or if two males even resemble each other in the slightest. The one in my avatar (Hitler) is the old boss, but the orange & blue OB hybrid wants to be too. They've worked out somewhat of a solution, with Stalin in charge of the left side and Hitler on the right, but they still go at it once in a while and invade each others territory. ;)

I think you'd be better off with one male and his harem.
 
Dburgess1231 said:
lots of caves... you need them with cichlids. you can obtain these by adding a lot of slate. i believe some with limestone would be good too. makes the water harder. i would build caves half way up the back walls.
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After scouting the LFS today, I think I'm going to go with mostly lace rock since in itself it makes lots of little caves.
 
Mbuna are rock-oriented fish (most scrape algae. etc off the rocks,) peacocks are typically open-sand dwellers. Some rocks would be helpful to divide the tank and provide sight breaks, but peacocks aren't cavedwellers by nature.
 
Ok... I'm starting with juveniles for sure, so would it be bad to mix. . .

peacock cichclids
zebras
(hate to say I cant acutally remember the name of these, but they're horizontally striped dark and light blue)
Yellow Labs

There would be lace rock stacked in the back, driftwood and artificial plants spread around on the bottoms, providing both open waters and hiding places/territories
I know not to always trust the LFS person, but in talking to them he was thinking these would possibly work together, I'd just have to try it and the idea is that I would buy juveniles and raise them until I can tell male and female, then keep groups of all three and trade off the extra males/females. Our favorites are the peacock and the one I cant remember the name of. . . Its possible we'll do larger groups of just the two too... My biggest question is if we mixed these types, they'd be semi ok right? I'd just need to keep an eye on them and if we have any especially aggressive ones trade them off or something.
If this wont work my final questions is what can and cant go together period. LOL. I've made myself "dizzy" trying to do all this research and nothing/no one agrees with each other. My favorite is the OB peacock cichlids, but we want more color than a breeding setup, thus the idea of small groups. We really like Blues/blacks, OB colors, and Yellow/black. How can we incorporate this into our tank?
 
Ok I think the one I couldn't remember was a Mbuna. . . a Demosoni? Which I think I read cant go with the peacocks? or can it? lol
 
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I'm also getting the impression that the octagon tank may not be optimal for the chichlids. . . What if I use the octagon for my goldfish and then set the cichlids up in my standard 55 gal? Would this be more idea for all of the involved fish?
 
The 55 would be much better for the cichlids, Cowgrl. I would also avoid any blue mbuna such as Demasoni, they're known to be quite vicious and need to be kept in schools of about a dozen to prevent them from killing each other. Yellow labs are a good choice.

Here's a video of my mixed Malawi tank. It's very lively and so far no issues other chasing, which is normal.

[video=youtube;YVgaQkbP70U]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVgaQkbP70U [/video]
 
Mbuna are too active/aggressive to mix with peacocks in general, but some of the Labidochromis species aren't too bad. Electric yellows or perlmutts are alright IME.
Demasoni ned to be kept in groups of 10 or more to spread the aggression around, smaller groups will end up as one that's killed off the others. A tankful of those and some electric yellows would work, but not with peacocks too. You might bet by with a group of OB mbuna in there too, but you'd need plenty of filtration and massive weekly water changes to support that many fish in a 55.
 
Ok. . . Went to the FS last night and ordered 5 peacock cichlids, 5 yellow labs, and 5 demosani. I had not yet read the answers given on here. It seems to be about 50/50 people saying that It will or will not work So... I called the FS this morning and asked if we could switch our order to all Demosani as my husband and I have agreed that these are the ones we both really love and we can't live without them in our tank. FS is not sure if its too late to change the order (they ship today) but he is trying and we are waiting for a call back with an answer. We have tons and tons of rock to put in for hiding spaces, and we are going to use the 55gal for the cichlids and move the goldfish to the octagon. If he cant change the order we're just going to have to see how it turns out, if he manages, our tank will be full of gorgeous Demosani! The plan is to buy 15 juveniles and as they grow cut our numbers until we have an appropriate male/female ratio.
 
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