Ok so me and me girlfriend have a 33 gallon freshwater tank we have just emptied because we had to move and we adopted our oscar he is now in a 55 gallon tank so i know he is happy. so now im wanting to start planning on building up the tank again i want to do a planted tank this time to help keep it clean we have a penguin filtered thats rated for a 55 gallon or so and a heater just need to know what fish combinations would go best and also the possible plants.

A 55 gallon is too small for an oscar they need at least 75 gallons.

As for fish for a 33 gallon it really depends what you are wanting there are MANY options. So we kind of need a direction.

well we want to start off with planting it and building an environment that can support some fish and then do shrimp of some kind. Mostly we want something thats self sustaining, cause were both in college full time and working part time so if we miss a weekly maintence it will be detrimental to the aquarium. I have a fascination for biology and want to just learn the ecosystem surrounding it.

Does that help??

as for the oscar he was a tiger oscar and was only 4 or 5 inches long at most. and its a friends tank its just the best we could do at the time.

Well shrimp are very peaceful and very delicate so you are going to want only smaller community fish with them so they dont get eaten. As for missing a weekly cleaning I would actually just half stock the tank that way missing one cleaning will do practically nothing because the bioload is small. Pretty much any small peaceful community fish would be ok And go for low light plants like Anubias and java moss and java fern.

I would go ahead and cycle the tank do you have a testing kit?

You will probably want to go with hardier fish as well ...

Any livebearers tend to be fine
A female betta sorority

Sorry I am drawing a blank its very late.

What you want is called a 'dutch style' aquarium....highly planted with a very few small fish and perhaps shrimp (in a 33, probably as few as 8 inhabitants). This is as close to self-sustaining as you will get.

We looked at the dutch style aquarium and really liked them.... and we just got the tanked cleaned out to now we are just going to start shopping around for plants that we like and looking at substrate... Would river bed rock be the best route with some sort of base below to anchor the plants?

Also i know picking out rocks and driftwood is particular in order to keep the water levels balanced?

do you know of any websites that might have a walkthrough on constructing a dutch style aquarium?

sorry for so many questions.....

Sounds like a good plan for awesome tank community, don't forget to update us, especially with photos..

river rocks small fish can get wedged in ... Sand or " river pebbles" are the best both you can get from home dept for about $5 a bag just make sure to wash them well.

Aquariacentral is Very rude but they know a lot...

pretty excited to get this started soon with it bein so cold outside gonna need some more indoor hobbies lol and would some kind of lower subrate to go below the river pebbles be needed to anchor the plants down?

No I use them they are just like normal aquarium gravel plants can be anchored straight into