Hi! Small but interesting.

I'm not so sure you could do what you want with that size of a tank. Its about 54 litres I think, which is not even 20g (Maybe around 15? my conversions are getting worse every day). I do not know too much about fish that would suit an aquarium of that size, so I won't make any suggestions. However, if you have an idea of what species or demeanor (carnivorous, active, ...) then your question will be a lot easier to answer.

If your not looking to start off huge (that can be overwhelming) and you can get more of a taller aquarium then perhaps a 20 gallon high would be best for you. You can get pretty much any "common" tropical fish in a 20 gallon just not the biggies like sharks, plecos, goldfish, etc...

So the choice is yours, provided you give enough space for the fish. Let us know what you decide.

Doesn't a 29 gallon have pretty much the same foot print as a 20 gallon?

no a 29 gallon is a little longer and taller then a 20 gallon high.

for character, I'd look to some type of dwarf cichlid myself. I spend many hours gazing at my 20 long neolamprologus multifasciatus tank. they are amazing little creatures that do lots of digging, showing off and rearranging the tank. these are "shelldweller" cichlids and are a great cichlid to breed. a 20 high with a pair of rams would look nice too. a 29 with neolamprologus brichardi are an interesting group or a Krib tank too. there's not a lot of other fish that come to mind with lots of character that fit in a smaller tank. We have a 29 with a few types of rainbows which I'm very pleased with. The rainbows never show aggression and are always out in the open swimming about and have lots of "hidden color" meaning they shimmer in the light with lots of colors that aren't just solid colors like a platy or something. Another favorite of mine are my tiger barbs so maybe a 29 with about 10 barbs of different types might look nice and they are always active and begging for food.

im lookin into getting multi's did you do anything special to your water for them? and what do you use as a substrate for them?

my water is 8.3 and hard right out of the tap so I didn't do anything. Sand is what they need. they move it around constantly. right now, I have a 6" pile against the front of the glass that is ever growing. I think one male is trying to move all the sand in the tank into this one spot a mouthfull at a time. I started with a 20 long and used some 1/2" patio rock (not concrete) and broke two pieces about 6x6" and stood them on end in the middle of the tank using large river stones (small potato size) to fill inbetween the flatrock and around the sides to support them so I have a sort of rockpile with two walls staggered in the middle to break up the line of sight along the bottom of the tank. I then added about 2" of pool filter sand (highly recommended, no dust clouds at all). It is a larger grain of sand and is already perfectly clean to be used in a swimming pool filter. Just make sure it is pure silica sand and doesn't have any type of additives for a pool (not sure if they add anything or not). I then added enough shells for the fish. they recommend 1 per fish but I went 2 per fish just in case some were the wrong shape or size. I bought mine from hobby lobby in assortments but you can find them all over the place, don't get painted hermit crab shells or anything coated. They need to be about the size of a moderately sized mystery snail/turbo snail/or escargo shell (everyone says, never ate snails). I used too large a filter (Aquaclear 300 on a 20long) so I have some turbulence in the front of the tank on one side so I used some scallop shells (from the shell assortments) and stuck them in the sand at the front of the tank to eliminate sand errosion but the fish seem to avoid this area of the tank because of this trait. I am likely to change to a sponge filter instead since this seems to be the method of choice for this type of tank. I have a cheap hagen corner filter I got in a group of stuff off ebay that I setup with some filter floss, ceramic media and substrate rocks for weight and use an airstone to power it so I have a type of biological filter already but don't really know how well it works. I have had an outbreak of brown algae that I'm going to purchase a bristlenose pleco for next week so I'm fixing to see how they react to that. I am very happy with the multi choice. I hope my newly acquired rams become as interesting as the multi's, they're definitely not as brave. Kyle

Want character? Monster got out of his tank again, and he's always doing stuff that's fun to watch.

Oh, Monster is a 7in long crayfish. 20g would do for 1.