I've got a 2 month old malawi cichlid set up and it seems to be going great. Previous to that I had a community tank with sword tails tetras ect. I'm sure I will cause raised eyebrows by saying this but I retained some former occupants that don't normally fit in with cichlids, these are 4 clown loaches, they still seem happy though, they are much larger than thier new tank mates and i'm sticking with the smaller cichlids so hopefully there will be no problems otherwise. at the moment they more than hold their own with no sign of stress, but i'm keeping a close eye on things.
Thanks for all the welcoming post