So what's the regular cheapo light? Is it a standard screw-in incandescant? The specs say 15W inandescant, which seems extremely small.
I would say most people are too critical of hex tanks. My 30 gal. hex fits plenty fish just fine -- I just had to be careful to get fish that would occupy different levels and not be all crammed together.
You do have to consider the width of the tank, though, and a 5 gal hex is going to be pretty limited. Still, the 5 gal Eclipses aren't as tall and skinny as most hexes.
I've heard people say bad things about the tiny Bio-Wheels in those eclipse systems. The specs for the 5 gal hex say it filters the water 7 times an hour. 35 GPH isn't that impressive.
It's hard to get a small tank with enough life in it to be interesting. Personally, I'd get the biggest light you can, get 3 or 4 big bunches of anacharis (have to trim it a lot) or dwarf sag (not as easy to find), a mystery snail, a betta, and 3 ghost shrimp. None of those are things you have to worry too much about your parameters with.
Once your tank is pretty established and you know your parameters are stable, you could stick two dwarf platies in there. People tell you not to put much besides bettas in small tanks, but you just have to know what you're doing. The hard part is finding fish that are small enough to put in there that will do OK without a large school, since most things that will fit in a 5 gal. get pretty touchy if you don't have at least 5 of them. Ottos would also work, but they can be touchy, and you probably want more "normal" fish. A betta and 2 dwarf platies would still be a little under your generic 1 in/gal rule when full grown, and I don't think a snail ever overstocked anybody's tank.
Some bettas like to eat snail feelers, and some platies just like to bite at snails constantly. All of my bettas have been very friendly, though, and the only fish that have ever picked on my mystery snail were my swords.
I've got a wide 5.5 gal with 3 lemon tetras and a betta in it which have a lot of color and seem happy, but most people would say that's a bad idea and I'm not sure that I'd recommend it. The tetras I have play around in the plants, follow the betta around, and are much brighter than they were in the LFS (but I guess that was crammed in a 10 gal. with 20 other tetras and no plants). Most people say that tetras will normally get stressed out, skittish, aggressive, lose their color, or whatever if you only have 3 of them. I guess I got lucky, because they really don't seem unhappy.
I don't think there's anything wrong with my 5.5 gal. It's hard to get a pic where they're not all wandering around in the plants. They seem to have plenty room.
You should be able to come up with something that doesn't involve guppies or just a single betta.
lol
