Re: fish or shrimp recommendation
Off the top of my head, guppy, molly, swordtails, amano shrimps

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Re: fish or shrimp recommendation
Not really. Bettas dont do well in cold water but thrive in warm water. Their natural habitat is in the flooded rice paddy fields. CRS on the other hand, is the direct opposite of bettas. They do well in temperatures below 25 degrees celcius. The change in temperature will be stressful to them.

If you really want to keep CRS, or any other dwarf shrimps, look for local home breeders who keep and breed them in the same temperature setting as yours for a long time. This way the shrimps are already accustomed to the temp fluctuations and have already graduated from commando school. Those that you get from your LFS, 95% of the time, they are not gonna make it. CRS belongs to the Caridina species and they are more picky about the water parameters. Neo Caridina like your red cherry shrimps are more forgiving, but they generally dont do well in warmer waters. If you are a beginner, best not to start off with Caridinas. Experiment and understand more before going into it.

Another fish that is close to the temperature setting you want is Ember Tetras and they are a schooling fish. They look nice in a group.

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fish or shrimp recommendation
I assume you are not going the high tech route. You can google around for the Diana Wlastad method. She uses potting soil, but you have to be careful on which soil you choose and theres a whole bunch of plants that she recommends. I can only think of rotala rotundifolia, java fern, water wisteria, amazon sword, coontail.

Intermediate plants, if you get them right, pogostemon erectus and reineckii mini are nice. These 2 can grow nicely if you do your research and prepare well in a Walstad tank. Easy if they are done in a high tech tank.

Side note, if you take guppies, note that they breed very very fast. If breeding is not your thing, like taking care of 20 to 50 fries at a time, then get all males. If you wanna try breeding, then its 3 females to 1 male ratio. More males than females will stress the females to death.

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They'll be fine. Which country are you from?

Ah ic. Then same country. You can lookup glassbox aquarium on facebook. It's one stop shop for everything you need including liquid bacteria for kick starting the cycling process. You can also ask him for recommendations for beginner tank plants in tissue culture cups, a bit costly but you wont have any hitch hikers of snails, worms or algae. He'll also be able to teach you how to start your tank if you ask.

Live stock can't be sold at the moment so now it's a good chance to start your planting and cycling process first before adding in live stock. They do delivery to your door step. You can say you are recommended by Jun Yan. If you need help or have more questions, just ask any of us.

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When you do water change, and you dose prime, yes you can use it immediately. As for stability, I dont think the bacteria will activate so fast and house themselves in a day.

Usually the process will be this:
1) Plant and flood your tank and run the filter
2) Pour in the bacteria and observe
3) Third day test your water for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. Keep testing until you see some ammonia levels. Then that's when your water cycle will start.

Cycling process:
Stage 1)
Beneficial Bacteria (BB) will start consuming the ammonia and colonize your filter media, substrate or anything porous with water flow. At some point, usually in the first week, you'd see your ammonia at peak level and some nitrites will show. That's when stage 2 starts.

Stage 2)
As your BB consumes the ammonia, it will produce nitrites. When you test the water and see some nitrites, its onto stage 2. Both ammonia and nitrite will be showing up in your test and maybe on the 2nd or 3rd week, you'd see your ammonia level lowered, nitrite peak and nitrates will show. And stage 3 starts.

Stage 3)
Your BB will continue to consume ammonia and nitrite. Nitrifiying bacteria will consume the Nitrite and produce nitrate. At about 4th week or so, you should have 0 ammonia, some nitrite and loads of nitrate.

You can google around for the nitrogen cycle. What I've told you is just a summary and based off experience using liquid BB, but not seachem.

A good link that I've read when I first started the hobby on the nitrogen cycle:
http://theplantedtankblog.blogspot.c...-tank.html?m=1

By the way, you can also consider replacing your activated carbon with seachem matrix. Activated carbon usually needs to be replaced every month or so, depending on your bio load. Once activated carbon is saturated, it will start to leech whatever poison it has taken in back into the water. So if you forget and keep using it, your tank will suffer. I usually use activated carbon to remove medication after treatment or when theres an uncontrolled spike.

Hey Jetxx sorry for not replying. By tmr my plants and BB will arrive and i will start the nitrogen cycle. Also, will ammonia be present in the tank or do i need to buy some ? Thanks again for givining me such a detailed answer

I got myself a 5 gallon tank with tropica aquarium soil as substrate. For the plants that would be Vallisneria Americana, Ludwigia Plaustris, Rotala Rotundifolia Green, Hornwort & Monte Carlo. Lastly for the BB i got myself some Seachem Prime & Seachem Stability.

i have another question which is will the plants survive without fishes provding them with co2?

Thanks again for the new information. It helps alot  Do you have any algae eating snails that you can recommend that can handle the 25-30 degree temperature fluctuation?