60L Tank: Blue Rams And What Else?

Hi everyone
I have an empty 60L tank and am looking for some stocking advice All of my tanks up until now have been heavily planted, so I would like to try something a bit different. My lfs has some beautiful driftwood that has lots of small branches going in all directions and one of them would cover most of my tank so I was thinking of getting one of these and maybe tying some moss to it and planting some val in the back for a bit of green. I already have a group of otos that I will be moving to this tank and I am determined to finally have some electric blue rams. Does anybody know how many I could have? Does three sound reasonable? I would like to have another group of fish as well. Ideally I would love to have four or five female bettas. Google says this is a bad idea but I was wondering if there would be a way to make this work? Alternatively, I am considering getting some five banded barbs to add as contrast. Would this be a safer bet? If so, how many could I have? The filter I have for this tank is really oversized and I'm not scared of doing a lot of tank maintenance, so my only real concern is overcrowding. Any advice would be really appreciated

ah okay, i didn't know that. can you recommend anything that might work better? i definitely want something bright. 

Okay, so could i potentially get a pair of rams and keep them with rummynose tetras? I know my pH is a but high, but I'm hoping that with heaps of driftwood in the tank that will lower it a bit? I'm starting from scratch with this tank so actually having sand would be a fun new challenge as well
I really want to give the rams a go, but if they're really fragile would a pair of apistos be better?

Everything I've read suggests I'd need loads of space if i were to keep two species of cichlid in the same tank so i think i'll have to choose only one :/ Do you know how many rummy nose tetras I could keep if my only other fish are a pair of rams and 5 otos? Maybe eight?

I wouldn't keep rams and apistos in a 60 litre tank. If it was bigger I'd say OK, but 60 litres is too small for both.
Rams are fish that pair up for life. If you got a 1m 2f trio it is possible that the male would chose one of the females then they would both gang up on the second female. Bolivian rams are related and I can tell you what happened when I had them. The 'pair' turned out to be 2 males. They lived together fine till I found some more mature fish and bought two females. One of the males then attacked the other so I had to put him in my QT. After a couple more days, the male paired up with one of the females and they went for the second female so I had to remover her too. The pair spawned 7 days after I put the females in the tank. I know Bolivians are bigger than standard rams but this was a 125 litre tank!

The problem with buying rams is that you don't know how far back in their breeding line the last wild caught fish were. If they have been tank bred for generations they will be OK with harder, cooler water but if the breeder has introduced a wild fish (for genetic diversity) within the last 2 or 3 generations they will need soft warm water. True rummies can cope with temps up to 27 but false rummies and otos won't be happy above 26. Cardinal tetras are the fish usually quoted as being good tank mates for rams (and discus)

I wouldn't keep rams and apistos in a 60 litre tank. If it was bigger I'd say OK, but 60 litres is too small for both.

Re-reading that, I realise what I wrote was a bit ambiguous. I meant not to have both together in 60 litres.

And Richard is quite right about a m/f pair. Rams like to choose their own partners; you can't just put any male with any female and expect them to get on. The ideal is to find a shop with some older fish and watch them. It will soon be obvious if any have paired up. A few years ago I saw a tank of rams that had three bits of decor in it. A pair had claimed the decor at the left side, another pair the right side and a third pair the centre back. The rest of them, unpaired, were swimming in the centre of the tank as far from the three pairs as they could get. That is the kind of thing to look for.

I know you live in Australia and will have issues getting some fish but a group of peacock gobies/gudgeons (different names, same fish) would be fine in 60 litres, provided there was just 1 male. These do have the advantage of not needing warmer water.

In 60 litres, I would go for apistos. I've tried to keep rams in the past and they always died within a month. My hardness is OK at 6 degrees, my pH is a tad high at 7.5, but the temp was 25 C. I haven't had any problems with apistos. Australia might be different but the commonly available ones in the UK are cockatoo and agassizi, but there are shops that stock others. Read up on how to sex them before buying.

There are two types of rummy nose, false and true. The true ones can take warmer water than the false. To make sure which as shop has in stock, search the word rummy in Seriously Fish and read up on the difference.

Apistos aren't as picky. Getting any male and any female is usually fine with them.