Aquarium stocking suggestion website

sivic

sivic

rum's my friend
Aug 6, 2004
211
0
16
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Cincinnati Ohio
sivic.has-my.info
Alot of times on this site you see questions asking for suggestions on stocking an aquarium.
"What kind of fish should i put in a XX gallon tank?"
"What kind of plants should i put in a XX gallon tank?"

Well i thought it would be a cool to have a website that you could visit and create virtual tanks that people can look at for ideas. Basically you create a virtual tank and add fish and plants to it. People can then browse specifc to their tank size and see what other people suggest as far as fish and plants go.

I find this alittle bit helpful since I have a ton of stocking questions myself and would like to know what everyone else has but in a quick and easy way.

For example. Im about to buy a 20 gallon tank. Im curious to know the combinations of fish i could have without overstocking, or just the right mix. I would goto this site and browse tank setups for 20 gallons. Listed would be peoples suggestions for fish and/or plants for a 20 gallon setup.

Sorry if this sounds confusing ill post the URL for people to check out for a visual idea when i get it done alittle bit more. Let me know what kind of feedback you have before that though :look:
 
I tried to look at this type of a problem from a math perspective a while back and found that the number of variables made it quite complicated. Here is the article with that introduction to considering the needs of fish.

If you keep it to comunity fish it would be much simpler. As you start to consider more fish you will need to account for water value needs (comunity versus african rift lake cichlids), behavior separators (rift lake cichlids versus SA cichlids), differences in behavior that changes compatibility even within a species (breeding pair versus single fish), desired behavior (schooling fish often don't apear to school in small tanks or if to crowded with other species)

Another thing that makes one tank different from another in the ammount of care is the size of fish kept. To keep the bioload linear in relationship to size of tank much larger tanks would be needed for the larger fish like discus or oscars than is generally accepted as a good home for those fish. Usually that means more work on the part of the aquarist if larger fish are kept in terms of cleaning filters, or the percentage of water changed.

There are many different goals in the keeping of aquariums that really diverge in what is considered good stocking for a tank. Mojo and the members of his forum AquaMojo.com are into big tankbuster fish, some collect fish and keep what some call zoo tanks, Breeding creates another idea on stocking, and then the design of planted tanks with fish that compliment that tend to be minimalistic on stocking.

I won't even get into plants. That knowlege has to be developed like a friendship. I may be able to give pointers since it is the same entity we strive to have this friendship with but ultimately it is up to you individually to get to know plants. Tom Barr knows them well enough to be of more help than I.
 
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Well i wasnt going to try to go that much in depth. Basically next to each "virtual tank" would be a little icon to flag the tank as a problem. Meaning that the users idea could possibly be overstocking or have other issues. As far as some of the constraints go, i would be able to check for certain things, like each fish would have its pH value, and temperment, and when adding to the "virtual tank" it could make sure other fish fall are similar.

I was going to leave most of this up to the users as you know what fish are in your tank. And what kind of fish would work together.
 
Kasakato said:
That would be hard. You would need strong ColdFussin, Flash, and maybe even Dreamweaver skills. There are also A LOT of fish out there. I dont think anyone is going to do it for free. If people pay someone it may be a different story.
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How bout just some good 'ole HTML and JAVA? Not everything is Dreamweaver Kas. There was a time when people learned the language and programmed, for me that is better than Dreamweaver. Also sivic, a nice compatilbity chart would be cool, if you have time and feel like doing one. Also, if you have some table\chart creating knowledge (again HTML and Java would be easily done). Researching would be the hardest part, besides debugging. Good luck to ya if ya decide to embark on this.
 
Im using PHP cause its fun :dance2:.. lol anyway i think you are all misunderstanding what im doing. You thinking more of the computer just giving suggestions, not true. The stocking suggestions are only entered by users. I will not trust trying to turn this all into a logic formula because theres just way too many possibilites. Think of the member aquarium spec section on this forum. People post their tank size and what kind of fish they have. Basically thats what this is. So you can see what other people stock in a tank of a specific size. I really think i need to implement this to a working stage where i can show you guys a live demo of it and see what you think.

Ill try to get a working demo by tonight or tomorrow.
 
nursie said:
Someone posted this one time and I saved the link.
http://www.liveaquaria.com/general/fwcompatibility_chart.cfm
You thinking about something like this, or better?

See...all you folks out there that post links..some of us DO save them! :clap:
Click to expand...

Nothing like that. My idea doesnt go too far into checking compatibilty (although it could at some point). But more or less its just you tell it what *YOU* would put in specific tank size. And it stores it so others can get an idea of combinations they could do based on what other people input.

Let me try another way to explain this. I ask a question asking, "What do you guys suggest i stock my 20 gallon aquarium with?"

Well you will have an answer, like hey put 5 neon tetra and 3 corys. Where as someone else might respond put 3 danios and 2 goraumis(sp?). Well basically you would input that on my site by creating a virtual 20 gallon tank and telling it what fish you think could be put in it. Then if someone wants to know the possibilites in a 20 gallon they can browse 20 gallon tank suggestions.

Does this make my point alittle bit more clear?
 
I think I got what you're saying. It might be good to add some sort of Amazon.com feature where other people can give their rating of how well stocked/compatible such a setup would be. Such a site could be very useful, especially for people in the early stages of planning before they can even formulate something like "how does this stocking list look?" to post on this forum. Also, this forum doesn't allow you to search for three letter words, so, e.g., 45 gallon and 45g are useless as search terms.
 
mrakins said:
I think I got what you're saying. It might be good to add some sort of Amazon.com feature where other people can give their rating of how well stocked/compatible such a setup would be. Such a site could be very useful, especially for people in the early stages of planning before they can even formulate something like "how does this stocking list look?" to post on this forum. Also, this forum doesn't allow you to search for three letter words, so, e.g., 45 gallon and 45g are useless as search terms.
Click to expand...

I like the feedback option, that would be fairly easy to incorperate. Im glad you see how searching the forums doesnt help to find information on stocking suggestions. Even if you search for 45 gallon and it would come back with some much useless information it would be pointless to search through them all.
 
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