I would really recommend Fullmetal Alchemist, Nonslid. Great show. Two seasons (though they start off similar and involve an almost nearly identical cast they're both amazing) and a good movie, so there's a lot there to keep you busy.
I would also suggest using the site MyAnimeList.net and searching an anime you have seen, then going to the user recommendations section to see what fans of that series suggest as being similar to it. Here is the Bleach recommendations page:
http://myanimelist.net/anime/269/Bleach/userrecs
(A lot of people seem to love Gintama and it does look similar to One Piece/Bleach, plus there's over 200 episodes of it! Not watched it myself but could be something to check out.
)
About filler, Bigbazz. It's typically only a problem for the really big and long-running series, like Naruto etc. because the show is churned out so regularly that they frequently almost catch up to the manga and need more story before the original writer has had time to publish any, so they have to get a team to make anime-specific arcs of the story. Some can be good (I thought the Zanpakuto arc of Bleach was awesome!), but a lot of it is pretty crap and breaks the main story. =I
Most shorter series (13/24/48 episodes) don't have to deal with that so they stay at a pretty consistent quality level for the duration.