Regardless of wether you should or shouldn't, if the lip locking continues, the mbuna is likely to injure the convict. Mbunas jaws are designed to pull algae off rocks and tearing the cons lips are not an issue evidently. Cons are plenty tough, but ill give the edge to the mbuna on bite
Yea the kenyi had the run of most of the tank and relegated the convict to just a terracotta pot. If the convict so much as swam out of it, the kenyi would go at him.
Probably best to not house them together if they are constantly going at it, or at least wait, rearrange the tank and try to reintroduce. I keep my mbuna and my ce/sa's separate, but that's just me.
Yea, I had no choice, as I said earlier, it was either have someone kill an innocent fish, or adopt the kenyi, and the only place I could put her was the tank with the convict. For the first few months, It worked out fine, as the convict is larger. The convict is still larger, but IMO the kenyi is crazy! Last night when I removed my con and put him in my 20 long, he looked so unhappy, as he really likes to swim. So I remembered someone saying "always remove the agressor" So I put the kenyi in the 20 long with 2 female convicts, and my male with the deformed lips in my 40 with a smaller male that was a breeding pair. If I kept the smaller male in the 20, the kenyi would have killed him, or just made his life miserable.