Idea: Website Educating Aquarists
 

I have long been pondering why there seems to be no comprehensive website covering the care and biology of aquarium species. Fishbase is a great resource, but is very scientific and doesn't provide specific information useful to aquarium keeping. I am interested in starting a website that will have detailed profiles of as many aquarium species (fresh and salt) as possible with all relevant information available which will give aquarists an easy place to look up fish they are considering adding to their aquarium and whether or not these fish are really suitable to their experience level and aquarium setup.

I hope to gather this information by allowing community members to comment on fish profiles so we can all learn what has and has not worked in the past. One way I thought of potentially offsetting the cost of the site is working with retailers to provide links to those that sell each species on the species profile so that it will also serve as a portal for those searching for harder-to-find fish.

I cannot do this alone however. I have only kept a small fraction of aquarium species and thus cannot be the source of the infromation needed for all species. I do really hope to work on this, and how long it takes will depend largely on the degree of help I receive. If anyone at all is interested in contributing pictures, data, or time, I would be extremely grateful. Just send me a PM or reply here if you're interested at all or have any thoughts on the idea.

ClamIam,

IMO, this sort of project would be so large, that without financial support, it could never happen. A pretty close approximation to what you are talking about is Wet Web Media - Bob Fenner's project. My understanding is that a lot of his material has or will be used in print publications - so there is some subsidy there.
I personally can't afford to produce material that I'm not getting compensated for in some way. I know this sounds mercenary, but it is true of many aquarium professionals. Believe it or not, I post here mainly as a "warm up" to my writing, to ask a question or to help me get rid of writers block.

On the other hand, a fish/aquarium Wiki *might* work. Wikipedia.org sure gets a huge number of highly accurate acticles written for it. The problem is that keeping aquariums is SO subjective you would have people writing all sorts of different advice - some of it just plain worng....wait, that sounds a lot like an aquarium forum<grin>.


Jay

p.s. - with Scott Michael's books, there is much less need for this, its already been done - by him! Of course you have to buy the books, but like I said, these big projects need to be subsidized.

I certainly understand what you mean. I actually got the idea as I was looking through some old (like late 1960s) fish books and being amused by how out of date some of the information was (especially scientific names). I realized the only ways to get the most accurate information about aquarium fish was either here where information is spread out all over the place and not really backed up by much or books that must be updated every few years. I guess if you really want it then buying the books is the way to go. I just look at a site like fishbase and wonder why such a site can't exist for aquarium information (answer: probably because fishbase is funded by scientific orgs). I guess I'll just have to keep dreaming about being a professional aquarium writer. Thanks for your input

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