There are plenty of natural rocks and fake shells and things that you could use to add a marine-like feel to your tank without effecting the water parameters. If you have a relatively large tank, there's no need to necessarily stick to cichlids. If you have a small tank, cichlids are mostly impossible anyway. True, african cichlids - particularly from lake malawi - are exceptionaly colorful, but there are plenty of varied and non-aggressive fish that would work too. My first suggestion is rainbowfish - just look at some pictures of boesmani rainbows, red rainbows, (neon) blue dwarf rainbows and lake katubu rainbows and you'll see that their colors are just as impressive as those of marine fish. Killifish are great for smaller tanks and have amazing colors and patterns. Then there's some species of gourami - take dwarfs with all their color morphs - that have wonderful colors. And, of course, the thousands of stunningly colored platies, guppies, swordtails and mollies. They may be common, but they are deffinately bright with colors to match those of marines. Some oddball fish like certain puffers and the purple spotted gudgeon also have interesting colors and there are various brightly colored and strikingly marked loaches - small ones like khulie loaches, yoyo loaches, zebra loaches and golden zebra loaches are suitable for small-to-medium tanks and then there's also the huge fish like clown loaches. There's also a few odd fish here and there from the barbs and danios that have nice colors too - take tiger barbs for example - and several species of brightly colored sharks like red tail black sharks and rainbow sharks. I think that if you are careful with your selection and choose realistic decorations and good lighting, a freshwater tank can easily match the color and vibrance of a marine tank.
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