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You know who you are. You fishkeepers who have been quietly keeping the African rift Lake Tanganyika shelldwelling cichlids.
I want to know all about them. I want to see photos.
Wish-ga I know you got some last year. How are they going for you?
Anyone else? C'mon, front and center and admit it, please.

I don't have any shellies now, but I've kept N. multifasciatus and N. brevis (I had these guys for quite a while).

Brevis are cool because they form a pair and share a shell (well, most of the time they share a shell). Here's a profile I wrote on them:

http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/n_brevis.php

Multis are cool for their multigenerational colony forming. They dig like mad and defend their turf like little wolves - working as a team and in waves to drive off much larger fish.

If you have hard water, it's hard to go wrong with Shellies...

Eric

Got multies in a 30g breeder tank (large footprint). Only about 10 multies right now but i started with 6 and they are in with 100+ shells. They are located on the wall directly accross from my 75g mbuna tank. 1.5 inches in size going on 2ft in character.

I just built a new stand for them so the tank would be higher off the floor so i could watch them longer without getting a cramp in my butt lol. so i spend far more time watching them then i do the mbuna.

no maintence other then feeding and water changes. pretty hardy if your not doseing chemicals and allways messing with the water. keep the tap as is and let them do the rest.

edit: oh one more thing dont drop them in a 10g. it sells them short and you miss so much. put them in a good size tank, even a 20L would be great. then you get to watch multi generations of rednecks fighting over women lol.

Sin - I agree about not keeping multis in a 10 gallon tank. I started mine in a 20 gallon high but moved them to a long so they'd have more floorspace. I started with 6 and sold the entire tankload of 20+ fish to a LFS for some serious cash.

Brevis in 10s, not being colony forming, work out great.

Eric

I've kept and bred most commonly available species, there's quite a few good articles out there about them. A few of them are even mine
Also, my favourite species was N. ocellatus, the most aggressive fish ive ever owned.