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Ah, well I never kept any of the larger fish, the largest I've kept were angelfish, goldfish and redtail sharks.
Actually, come to think of it, aren't sharks fast and strong bottomdwellers? A nice match for the tigers?
For tetras I would go for the large sleek built ones, not the rounder types like minors or phantoms. In my experience those just stick to a corner and flare at everything, so they might get beat up. I may be wrong of course.
You can look into hatchetfish too I think? I know they are fast, but you will need a good lid on the tank because they jump.

To protect the plants you can pot them, cover their roots with gravel, or rocks and wood if the fish are presistant or you can put a nylon net around the roots (dirt/fertilizer included). I used to do this to protect my plants from the goldfish, I used old pantyhoses and it works wonders.

Maybe they weren't feeding their fish enough? Or the fish were very stressed and needed something to release their frustrations on?

Alright so aside from the fish stores I have recently been to, I found a store that would take about 20-25 minutes to get to, shorter than the drive to Jacks(which ended badly because they had unhealthy fish and fish that could not be in the tanks at the size that they were or the amount that was there..).
Anywho this place has 600 aquariums just for storing fish ranging from 10 gallons up to 300 gallons and when looking through substrate, fish, and other things, I found a very large variety of things I could most definitely use for this aquarium setup, due to prom costs I'm doubting I'll be able to do a 30 gallon immediately so I'm just gonna try to establish this 10 gallon that I went and bought but am going to still use this thread(just this one if the staff do not mind) to get ideas on DIY equipment and different plants for the eco system that I am trying to create for the fish/shrimp that will be living in a larger tank that I will be getting in a couple of months.
Hoping to get a 100 gallon by September(yes a ways away but It's the best I can do considering I won't be home for 11 weeks starting June.)

A friend of mine has a school of tiger barbs and he told me he cannot keep plants in his 70 gal because they uproot them idk if its common with all of them though

yes it does however they still both use the oxygen, the tablets dont attack based on how they grow, but oh what they need, the algae needs the oxygen in the water, thus by removing it the algae dies off, and also the tablets arent the best for the fish either, as the fish need the oxygen, i never knew this till about a year ago, and once i stopped using the tablets my fish got much healthier, the tablets cause more stress and a rise in ammonia leaves i beleive which is bad, the natural way to get rid of algae is use salt, you can find in anywhere and not only does it kill algae but it heals fish, its like the chicken noodle soup to fish i guess you could say.

idk about you but the salt works for me, i have a 40 gal and i dont use any chemicals, all i do is remove the algae and use salt and it doesnt come back for awhile, bow ive used a bubble curtain so i cant comment on that, although ive heard they add a considerable amount of oxygen, i use a small breathing stone(it makes a small curtain i guess) in a 1o gal with my cichlid, and it has made a big difference, but like i said b4 i no longer use the chemicals, all my live plants died when i used the chemicals and most of the chemicals say do not use with live plants, so yeh....

yeah but salt is not a cure for algae (it can actually kill all your plants)
it kills invertebrates like ich and helps with a fishes slime coat
i did the research on it and never read anything about using it for algae (unless like i said you use an unhealthy amount since algae is more resilient than regular plants and you will kill the plants before you kill the alage)