This post does not specifically belong in the general freshwater but its the best forum i could find.
I have come to realize that most fish stores I've been to the little "care" labels are at best insufficent and possibly misleading. These usually group the fish being sold into one of maybe 3-5 broad catagories some of which seem they should overlap but don't (non-agressive, agressive, coldwater, tropical, etc)
Specific examples can be found at petsmart. I've seen them elseware also.
While these are ok I've recently come to find out that it doesn't mention anything about optimum ph ranges, hardness, temp ,etc that the more serious hobbiest might want/need/rely on. While this info can be found on various websites and books i, quite frankly, find it to be conflicting and a pain in the *** to compile this information. This has lead me to a few mistakes in my fish selection that will prevent my selection from being "all that it can be".
I am interested in finding a central repository of all information known about as many fish as possible. If this does not exist I am interested in creating one.
Information I would like to include will be a list of common names, scientifc names, water requirements, images, and a block of text to describe the fish. I have seen others online but they do not give me the info i want.
Some features i eventually envision is the ability to type in water quality info and get a list of compatable fish. Or, inputting a fish will return its optimum tank mates.
The backend/frontend should be relativly easy to produce(at least for a moderate number of users, google level usage out of the question) but the data, of course, will be difficult to compile. I am trying to decide between a wiki format (everyone adds/changes with no moderation) and a standard dynamic webpage format (only trusted members can change/add)
Does anybody know of any raw electronic databases with this info to give me a starting point? Also if anybody knows of any place I can host such a site that will allow for ASP(preferably) or PHP (bit rusty but shouldn't be a problem) server scripting with a SQL driven database backend (mysql, postgress, ORACLE if i absolutely have to) that would be great. I could also use an access database to store the data but security and performance will be greatly hindered.
This will eventually be a huge project but initial creation phase SHOULD move pretty quickly.
I have come to realize that most fish stores I've been to the little "care" labels are at best insufficent and possibly misleading. These usually group the fish being sold into one of maybe 3-5 broad catagories some of which seem they should overlap but don't (non-agressive, agressive, coldwater, tropical, etc)
Specific examples can be found at petsmart. I've seen them elseware also.
While these are ok I've recently come to find out that it doesn't mention anything about optimum ph ranges, hardness, temp ,etc that the more serious hobbiest might want/need/rely on. While this info can be found on various websites and books i, quite frankly, find it to be conflicting and a pain in the *** to compile this information. This has lead me to a few mistakes in my fish selection that will prevent my selection from being "all that it can be".
I am interested in finding a central repository of all information known about as many fish as possible. If this does not exist I am interested in creating one.
Information I would like to include will be a list of common names, scientifc names, water requirements, images, and a block of text to describe the fish. I have seen others online but they do not give me the info i want.
Some features i eventually envision is the ability to type in water quality info and get a list of compatable fish. Or, inputting a fish will return its optimum tank mates.
The backend/frontend should be relativly easy to produce(at least for a moderate number of users, google level usage out of the question) but the data, of course, will be difficult to compile. I am trying to decide between a wiki format (everyone adds/changes with no moderation) and a standard dynamic webpage format (only trusted members can change/add)
Does anybody know of any raw electronic databases with this info to give me a starting point? Also if anybody knows of any place I can host such a site that will allow for ASP(preferably) or PHP (bit rusty but shouldn't be a problem) server scripting with a SQL driven database backend (mysql, postgress, ORACLE if i absolutely have to) that would be great. I could also use an access database to store the data but security and performance will be greatly hindered.
This will eventually be a huge project but initial creation phase SHOULD move pretty quickly.
