Starting an aquarium

[Daniel]

I have a great fastination with fishes, I may have started as a beginner, but now i'm realizing my mistakes. My fish collection has so far stayed in a 10 gallon tank, and now I'm tinking about a 55 gallon aquairum. So far I only have the aquarium and now need help setting it up. as my beginner 10 gallons with just air bubble filtration, I experiences danios, swordtail, guppies, snails, cories, and the goldfish. Each one ended up with tradegy, as they all died off one by one, except for my goldfish which lasted a year a so. So I'm planning on setting up a perfect 55 gallon tank. And I need advice on the substrate, plants, and cycling the water first. The fishes I want to include are zebra danios, neon tetras, cory, swordtail, and eventually discus. But I have no clue on anything to do with ph, nitrate level, nitrite, amonia, and dh and such. I've been reading books, but they aren't a help, so if anyone could teach me a step by step solution on the best sucess rate of keeping fish I'll be oblige. Thank you