Freshwater fish are very easy to take care of, as long as your water has completely cycled first. I have a couple of FW tanks myself.
If you have not cycled the tank yet, here is what I suggest: set up the tank completely, and add a couple of drops of pure household ammonia. When testing the water, your ammonia should be off the charts, and in a couple of days, your nitrites will spike. Keep adding a couple of ammonia drops each day until you wake up one morning and test the water to find both ammonia and nitrites are at 0. Then do a 50% water change. I have done this with every FW tank and have never lost a fish due to fluxuating levels of ammonia or nitrite. Cycling this way is also faster...when you kill fish, it could take up to 2-3 months to cycle, but my tanks cycled in 2 and a half weeks using this method.
After cycled, just choose whatever fish you like best. For a 10 gallon tank, only buy 10 inches of live fish...unless you have a filter suitable for a much larger tank and you hardly ever feed the little guys.
When I started out, I had a 5 gallon tank with only a male betta and some snails. I also had 2 10 gallon tanks with Colombian sharks, angelfish, and plecos. All did very well.
You might also want to look into ornamental fantail goldfish such as orandas, moors, and ryukins. They have better personalities than most tropicals do. IMHO.
