I would suggest upper jaw bichirs like mentioned, you can put some delhezi, moke, retro, palmas polli, palmas palmas, and senegals, height wont be an issue to this guys.
16" height then you drop the water 1.5" then if your going to add another 1" layer of substrate will leave you 13.5" left.
Im loving the idea of doing a huge delhezi biotope setup with a ton of emersed vegetation, would enough hiding spots in the form of dense vegetation and roots be enough to help prevent jumping? Im going over to check the tank out tonight but Im pretty sure theres no lid included