Well first, it should be pointed out CA and SA cichlids are very different fish. SAs as a whole tend to be a lot more peaceful (with a few notable exceptions) and tend to prefer soft acidic water (not a huge concern unless you're raising certain extreme wild caught fish as most will adjust fine to your tap water). SA range in size from big severums to tiny dwarf cichlids like apistogramma. Other popular groups are acaras, earth eaters and technically angelfish and discus are SA cichlids as well (as are cichla and crenicichla, AKA peacock bass and pike cichlids, a whole other topic
).
CA cichlids as a whole tend to be more aggressive and prefer a higher ph/kh. They also range in size from massive like dovii to small like convicts, with everything in between. Some of the most common CAs you see (this is one of only times you will see me use common names
) are jaguars, Midas/red devils, firemouths, green terrors and jack dempseys.
Then you have the Africans, which vary widely depending on where in Africa they come from--rift lakes, rivers, etc. The rift lake variety are the most commonly seen and many common ones are very colorful and can be kept in large numbers (which is actually recommended in their case to spread out aggression). These prefer a high ph/kh.
I could go on and on but as you can see there are a wide variety of cichlids from different parts of the world. It comes down to what you want/like in a tank. I'm a CA guy myself, but appreciate them all. I like the intelligence, aggression and relative ease of care and breeding (depending on species of course!) of CA cichlids. You will find die hard fans of any groups of the fish I mentioned and they all have a reason behind it. Look at pictures online and describe what you would like behaviorally from your fish and I'm sure MFK can point you in the right direction.
