oooh this subject causes quite alot of controversy and is usually brought up alot.
When you say south americans though, do you also mean central americans aswell or are you just talking specifically about the south american types?
Here's the thing:
With African Cichlids (The Rift Lake ones which are from Lake Malawi [Mbuna Cichlids], Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria) and they require a much higher ph than south americans. Central Americans... on the other hand, are actually found in pretty much the same high ph waters as Rift Lake cichlids in the wild.
Now here comes the bigger issue... diet!
Both South and Central American cichlids are usually Carnivores (meat eaters) and/or Omnivores (eats both meat and plant based foods)
Mbuna cichlids especially are a problem with the diet issue, since they are mainly herbivores (mainly eat plant based items) with a few exceptions I should note such as Labiodchromis and most Melanochromis species both of which can handle higher proteins (meatier foods contain more protein usually). Now when I say that mbuna eat mainly plant based items, I don't mean that they'll ignore meatier foods, they will eat anything, but meat in an mbuna's diet isn't always a good thing, (again with a few exceptions)
Hope this helps at least a little bit.
