Do you enjoy train sets?

If it's a 6 or 8 foot tank, I'd go with a half dozen yo-yo loaches. Fantastic fish.

I do.

Paludarium

It's also possible to make some that are self sustaining.

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I say catch a small bass or sunfish from a local lake and raise it.

Well, shit.

Piranhas

That's what I'm doing.  They are fun.  Loads of character.  
And they do not lose their color, it comes and goes.
The bluegill I have will look pale one day then the next, will be the most amazing shades. Bright yellows and deep greens.

Get a Octopus and call him Cthulhu!

I’d add salt

If it's a glass tank, freshwater only.  If you don't want to keep after it, freshwater only.

Do a plant tank, and add a shit ton of Killifish, Kori cats and Bala sharks and Rainbow sharks.  All easy fish to deal with, fairly robust and cheap to buy.

Also, whatever filtration you have, triple it to make your life easy, I would use single Fluval FX6 and a pair of Fluval 07's.  Over filter is better then under filter.  And the hang on filters are a pain in the ass.

Now that I think about it, if it's a 6 or 8 foot tank, I'd put a mattenfilter on one end, some driftwood and small pieces of 1/2 PVC pipe, fine sand substrate, and a gross of kuhli loaches.

Craigslist / FB Marketplace - CHEAP to anyone what will move it...

For around $8.70 you could start a lucrative all cash income fish bait cricket farming enterprise. Go buy a few dozen for breeders, pie pan water tray, vermiculite breeder area and some thrown out pulp paper egg cartons for them to eat.

Stinks like hell though.

I always did like African cichlid displays when I was a kid. But after all the tanks I had I’ll always make a saltwater tank.

Quite frankly fish sand and minimal rock and a few tangs sounds nice.

There are ways saltwater can be done on a budget. Instead of getting 200 pounds of live rock he could get dry rock at a fraction of cost and seed it. If he just wants fish he doesn’t need expensive lighting. He could make his own sump etc.

Those are pretty cool. Funny little guys.

Fill it with  gasoline and shoot at it with tracers.  

Next thread, please.  This one is done.

My wife and I used to do similar.  many-many moons ago.  We bought a bunch of stuff at the fabric store.  Looked like semi-fine n
netting.  Truly amazing the variety of life in a creek.  We had a ball.  We would lay the netting down in summers when the creek was low, go up stream and start dragging our feet downstream.  Several species of darter.  One darter was even camouflaged like that blue-green lichen on rocks.  Tiny bass.  Tiny bream.  Mussels.  We caught crickets in the yard.  Fascinating how the bass would eat them: In the blink of an eye the cricket would be in its mouth.  Second blink the cricket would be floating in front of its mouth again but with a dismembered leg would be left floating when he sucked it back in.  Then two legs left floating.  The bass would only eat live food.  

We caught a wad of minnow fry and put them in.  We had caught a tiny catfish about a month earlier.  He'd only come out of his hiding place at night.  Already after sunset we ate supper and came back to see.  All of the fry were in the catfish's distended belly.  So big he couldn't get back in his hole.  He was already dead and the bream were already pecking at him.  After wondering how the little fellow found them all in about an hour, we later learned catfish can 'see' the electrical signals from a fish's brain to its muscles.  Their sensors are in their whiskers.  

Wife (GF then) was a trooper.  Snakes would slide in the creek; sometimes seen as well as heard.  I was able to convince her even if they're vipers their movement into the water was proof they meant us no harm.  It was the viper, safely asleep on the bank in the sun that was the danger.

Blowed at by many deer who seemed to think it really strange for people to be in the creek.  We were usually accompanied by a blue heron who used our presence, flushing fishes, to his advantage.  Sometimes not more then 50 feet away.  My old dog blitz would show up and check on us about every hour, hang for five or so, cool-off in the water.  We even trained him to approach from upstream.  He'd get up, shake off, and give us his look that meant I'll be back.  If he wasn't home when we were carried to the creek, no worries, he'd still find us.   He'd huff (no barking) from the bank to tell us he'd caught up to us.  

Mama or deddy would drop us off truck in a pickup at a bridge.  Then drive to another bridge about two miles downstream (as a snake slithers) and drop off our bicycles.  We'd be gone all day and catch scores of fish.  Maybe 4-5 eating size ones.  We released them all.  What a woman.  Tall.  Thin.  Tanned.  She actually enjoyed it.  She always caught the biggest fish, dammit!

I've found ONE Bluegill is easy to keep in a 125 gal tank. I'm using pool sand as a substrate.  When I tried keeping several small bluegill they ended up fighting and killing each other.

I'd think any sunfish should be easy to keep.  Bass would probably be hard to feed unless you had a minnow farm.

I've thrown in some fathead minnows and the bluegill ate them all in a day or so.  They pretty much act like cichlids - very aggressive.  I've kept Oscars before and they are more work than a bluegill - fairly sensitive to nitrates and get hole in the head.

My bluegill is like an Oscar in that he will swim/shake back and forth when he want to get fed.  Seems to be happy on a diet of nightcrawlers and the occasional cricket.