My scrapes from scraps was basically a scaled down version of what you are describing. Here is my most recent picture, I can't get a new one because I just tore it down to setup my new 20 long.
It's final state was basically the same as this photo just more of everything, more peace lily, alge, anubius, and shrimp. As for maintenence I just did topoffs every several weeks and that's it. If I would have put just a little more time into maintenence it could have been pretty nice. But it was no tech super low maintenence and enough of an ecosystem for my shrimp to breed. Build details are in the linked post and somewhere there is a "reunion" thred with updates.