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Does anybody have a nice set up for this theme.
I will like to try something colorful

I was thinking about doing one like that myself. This is a pretty good set up for a river tank, you should check it out.

http://www.loaches.com/articles/a-river-runs-through-it

For stocking you could make it a coldwater tank and do Hillstream Loaches and WCMM I think. I would wait and see if Joe Potato thinks it's okay first, he had a river tank with Hillstream Loaches so he should know. Hope this helped, good luck with your tank.

http://www.aquarium365.com/asia.htm

There is a list of Asian fish. I quite like Killifish, they're really colourful and easy to keep top dwellers.

Plus you could have several female bettas or a selection of gouramis. Not sure if you can do both but cant see why not. Plus rainbowfish are colourful and peaceful.

Hope this helps.

Hey Marvin. Great choice with the Asian River!

The link that truestar gave you is a good one if you want to closely mimic a fast-flowing river. His other point about WCMMs and Hillstream Loaches is a good one too -- they make perfect fish for a coolwater river tank. There's another article about hillies I recommend you read. Pretty much any fish from the genera Beaufortia or Gastromyzon are good for beginners, especially if you want to have a really fast-flowing river. If you want things a bit slower, fish from Homaloptera and Shistura are good choices. Realize, though, that hillies have very specific environmental requirements, so do a lot of research about them. All that being said, though, they're a great group of fish -- my favorites, in fact.

If you're looking to still keep a tropical-temperature river tank, some kind of larger danio (like giant danios or Bengal danios) or some types of rainbow fish would work. I don't know much about rainbows. The person you would want to talk to about them is longhairedgit. He is FP's resident expert on them.

For a fast-flowing tank, I wouldn't keep gouramis or bettas. They'd work great for a slower tank (in fact, gouramis are my second favorite group of fish! ), but none of them appreciate a strong current.

Hope this helps!

Assuming you might not want to go for the high flow coolwater option ,or have a limited pallete of coldwater fish, and perhaps are happy to go with the regular filter options you could easily keep a massive selection of fish from asia, including many well known representatives of some very large fish families known in the hobby.Nothing against the dozens of species of hillstream loach, I rather like them, but if the limit of your remit is anything from asia then you have a simply staggering choice. For example.

Rainbows, shilbeidaes, bagrids, a whole selection of barbs, killies and panchax,glassfish,garras,paradisefish, mosquitofish,dozens of rasboras, loaches,a few small gobies , and various gouramis, even much overlooked and great little fish like gagata catfish, and halfbeaks can be made to work together, creating a wonderfully diverse 55 gallon aquarium. Theres little difference in the ph ranges of many of these fish groups, most have a good temperature tolerance range too, and the only proviso is that you give some of them a little extra oxygen compared to say, an amazon tank. There are of course many species that also like mildly brackish conditions, and that too could be an option. Tried and tested many species out for compatability too, having quite a few of the aforementioned fish myself, so Im happy to give advice on compatibility issues.

If you want something different from a community, there are lots of predators and non-shoaling fish too, from climbing perch that really do climb, all the way through to fish like some of the larger predatory cyprinids, leaf fish , fire eels, garfish,some quite interesting gudgeons, puffers, and even the smaller snakeheads.

Spoilt for choice really. Notably most of them get on rather better with conspecifics (predators aside obviously) than a lot of common amazon or african fish,so there are many options to have a peaceful contented community that include some really quite fascinating oddball fish as well as aquarium favourites.

Should be fun

Question is, what do you like the look of?

ps not too sure about that filter option posted, looks great in theory, and I have to admit I liked the idea of it when I first saw it about a year ago,but typically enough my fevered brain started picking holes in the design. I noticed that it only has sponge filters , which could mean a lot of gravel vacuuming needing to be done, then you take into account the nitrite sensitivity of most hillstreams , and what happens when you clean regular sponges, and you quickly realise you might be better off running an external and just adding a couple of powerheads with venturi heads on them. Imagine having to keep taking that sucker apart when it clogs with algae Additionally a hillstream loach doesnt live in full flow all the time as it would be forced to in that tank, when they are tired or ill they would refuge in eddies behind big chunks of rock where the water would be well oxygenated, but fairly still. I have a feeling a tank like that might kill exhausted hillstreams eventually. I know some hillstreams are aerodynamically designed so that technically a few of them might even be comfy resting in a waterfall, but it still requires a degree of muscle torsion, and if the fish gets sick and weak for whatever reason, well youre not gonna be able to help it recover in a tank like that.

A regular tank setup with a powerhead or two should be perfectly sufficient. Its the oxygen they really need, and you can provide that without turning a tank into a rushing torrent. If you only had well roiled and moving water in half a tank it would probably do, and thats easily done in a regular setup by adding a powerhead and an oxygenator or two above normal. They only die because people make no provision for them, as long as some provision is made theres no need to go quite to the lengths of that setup. I can see that sort of setup being useful for supplying nutrients to a rack of live rock in a marine situation, but it seems excessive for a hillstream loach that could use a rest area or two, and the filtration might be a bit poo, even of the tank does seem outwardly more suitable for the production of nitrosoma bacteria. I dont think it will be as stable as a chunky external filter.

Im wondering if some sort of system with a big filter with a massive flow rate, and a long tank with a glass ramp on about a 25 degree angle fitted into it with some pebbles siliconed into it might not work better, that way when the fish are sick of the flow all they have to do is get off the ramp.

ps not too sure about that filter option posted, looks great in theory, and I have to admit I liked the idea of it when I first saw it about a year ago,but typically enough my fevered brain started picking holes in the design

I ran that design in my river tank for about 3 years, and it worked surprising well. Granted, I was lightly stocked (8 hillies and 12 WCMMs), but it was a great little bio-filter. Wasn't so great for mechanical filtration, but that's what WCs are for. Besides, with hillies you should be doing a buttload of WCs anyway.

I guess if you were that concerned about it, you could add some media columns before the powerheads in the circuit. Take a wider PVC tube (clear so you can see inside), rig up a removable joint, and put filter floss, zeolite, or anything else you wanted in there. Add some plastic meshing to the top of it so it doesn't get sucked into the powerhead. That should about cover it.

I have thought about this before too. How about a nice large school of epsi rasboras, a school of zebra or yoyo loaches, and a couple of flying foxes for algae control. Also dont forget the plants. If you keep the lighting on the low level, go with hardy cryptocorynes like wendtii and any type of java fern. If you get the higher lighting you could also add in some nice rotala. Rotala rotundifolia worked and flourished in my 29 with a little over 1 watt per gallon. It does even better now with 2.25 watts per gallon under power compacts though. You could even use hygrophila polysperma, h. difformis, h. corymbosa. Just like R. rotundifolia, these will grow in low light but do best if better lighting is provided.
-Good luck