Browsing through other fish forums, i regularly see the question- Can i put four yellow labs and an albino oscar in a 55 gallon tank with a common pleco?- or at least something related to that. The answer is yes, but not in a 55 gallon tank. Oscars are fairly(but not too much) passive cichlids, as far as cichlids go and will generally not do your Africans harm- although the Africans may do your oscars some harm. Just because these oscars are 14'' and the Africans are 8'' doesn't mean they can't hurt your oscar. They can. And they will.

However, in larger tank(and i mean 125 gallon and above), the whole thing changes. The Africans are not so cramped and tend not to pick on the oscars. But by the other token, if the Africans are small enough, they make great oscar food

So, please think about getting Africans with in your oscar tank.

Malawi cichlids are stunning, however, I don't think I would keep them with Oscars. If I was going to keep these type of cichlids, I would specialise just on them and set the environment up correctly. After all, their requirements differ quite a lot from Oscars. I am very much going off the idea of a mishmash in tanks, I do sometimes wonder what the point is of having fish that come from a different part of the world in the same tank.

Yeah, I personally don't keep Africans with my Oscar, they're in their own tank completely.

What do you mean you don't do it? You have loaches with you oscars, don't ya?

I don't think I said don't do it, I said I was going off the idea. Yes, I have got Clowne Loach with my Oscars. That's why my new 300 gallon is going to be different. If you go to a public aquarium, you don't normally find tanks with fish from different parts of the world in the same tank. I think if someone has gone to the trouble to set their tank up as a Malawi Cichlid aquarium, sticking a shoal of silver dollars in there would render the whole project worthless.

That's just my way of thinking, I'm certainly not going to dictate to anyone about what they should do. Like they say, "each to their own"

Yeah, I would agree. Sorry, thought you said you didn't keep fish from the same area. My mistake

I also agree with keeping the same with the same (that only natural ) I have a Malawi tank - with rocks and the whole story. They are beautiful, but their water is quite different from the rest. They breed like mad, eat a lot of the fry and some of the fry grows up to be stunning fish - however, the different species (Malawi) do cross-bread - be aware of that!