75 gal African cichlid tank

With a lovely blank slate like that, you can go pretty much anywhere. Why not take a look at the cookie cutter setups, and make one of your four species your acei?
Generally, avoid auratus and kenyi. Demasoni are nice, but you want 15 of them (end up with twelve ish). I love my electric blues.

You can't go wrong with yellow labs. If you are going with a mbuna tank, definitely demasonis. I would also had more Ps. Aceis.

3 species would be a great start.

16 Demasoni
6 Acei
8 labs

It might seem over stock but eventually you will weave out the unwanted males and keep the dominant ones.

Well, I decided to not go with demasoni as they were too small at the store. I didn't get more than one of a species (I've had breeding pairs and that is a pain I can't handle at the moment). I got an electric blue, cobalt blue, gold fin peacock, albino socolofi, an O B peacock, a yellow lab, some kind of zebra, and a red finned zebra. With my sand substrate I wish I would've gotten some darker colored ones, but there were size restrictions with my aceis being so large.

How big are your acei? I have seen some HUGE ones before.

The aceis are about 6"

I couldn't be certain without measuring, but I have a buddy who had one, actually gave it to my other friend come to think of it, but he was huge. Had to of been 10". Barely fit in a 5 gallon bucket. Maybe I'm thinking it was bigger than it really was, but he was absolutely massive. Just a heads up. I'll check with my other friend and see if he still has him in his show tank and see how big he really is/

Fish have an indeterminate growth, so they can get as large as they like as long as they live for a long time and you keep feeding it. Its weird right now, the male acei seems to be courting the o b peacock that I got rather than the other acei, following it around and flashing its fins. Its odd.

life finds a way bro. even if you wanna try avoiding breeding itll happen sooner or later lolz. GL with the singles but imo your gonna be doing a lot of returns at some point or another

Well, I just removed one of the aceis because he was getting the **** kicked out of him by 3 of the fish. Now the he has been removed and I added a female jewel that was with my 12" oscar, the tank has calmed down a bunch. It looks like the red finned zebra will be the dominant fish.

I have a question for those of you who use sand as a substrate, how do you suction clean it? I did a 25% water change last week and suctioned up some of what was on the bottom, but not as much as I would've liked. What's the best way to clean the poo and extra food without removing a bunch of sand? I use pool filter sand.

Its a matter of delicacy. Assuming you have a python, having the siphon at the right strength and keeping the vacuum at the right distance from the sand, you should be able to siphon just the waste off the top without sucking much, if any, sand. I do it all the time.

The sand should go up the large tube for a bit and then settle back down to fall out. That way the lighter debris gets picked out leaving the heavier sand. Takes a little practice to do it just right and I normally settle for losing some sand but not enough to worry me. Swishing the end of the vac back and forth will help to loosen some things that may try to stick to the bottom.

i do a little 'whirlwind' type thing with the vacuum. then quickly suck up the whirlwind. takes practice but i suck up less sand. i spot clean twice a week with this method