Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Aquarium Fishes

Here are some tasks you can do, as organized by the WikiProject Aquarium Fishes, if you are interested, please sign up on the project page. You are welcome to also add new tasks or remove the old ones. De-Orphan: Copyedit: Tetra, Lionchu, Blackline penguinfish, Flowerhorn, Pterophyllum, Chinese hillstream loach (Beaufortia kweichowensis), Violet line piranha Expand: Yellow-tailed Damselfish, Gold Spot Pleco, List of aquarium diseases, Headstander, Brachygobius, Red-tailed black shark, Osphronemus, Freshwater aquarium, Thick-Lipped Gourami, Pseudochromis diadema, Striped Raphael catfish, Platydoras, Twospot turkeyfish, Agamyxis, Red eye tetra, Saddleback clownfish,Hemigrammus pulcher, Emperor tetra (Nematobrycon palmeri), Flying Fox (fish) (Epalzeorhynchos kalopterus), Rainbow shark (Epalzeorhynchos frenatum), Myxocyprinus asiaticusMacrognathus siamensis, Badis badis, Black Phantom Tetra Add taxobox: Develop featured article: Aquarium, Cichlid Peer review: Arius berneyi Berney's shark catfish Article request: We're trying to clean up the species list bit by bit. We're currently on Catfish. Australian shark catfish Arius graeffei, Two spot glass catfish Ompok bimaculatus, Spotted pimelodus Picture request: Clown knifefish, Peters' elephantnose fish, Buenos Aires tetra, Croaking gourami, Pygmy gourami, Fire eel, Zebra pleco, Hypancistrus, Sorubim, Brachyplatystoma, Xenomystus nigri, Peckoltia, Hemiancistrus,Snakeskin gourami, Farlowella acus (current images are copyrighted), Farlowella (current image is copyrighted), Brachygobius xanthozona, Brachygobius, Columbian Tetra, Tire track eel, Agamyxis, Pseudomystus, Bagrichthys, Leiarius, Dekeyseria, Leporacanthicus, Pseudacanthicus, Acanthicus, Hoplosternum littorale, Callichthys callichthys, Scleromystax (Upload any non-copyrighted fish images to the appropriate section of Wikimedia Commons) Identify species in the picture: (Identify and move the images to the appropriate section of Wikimedia Commons) Collaboration: Fishkeeping Other: See the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Aquarium Fishes/to do page If you have any question, comment or suggestion, please discuss here.

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Here are some tasks you can do, as organized by the WikiProject Fishes, if you are interested, please sign up on the project page. Copyedit: Expand: Barb (fish species), fishing industry, Greater Argentine, Gold Spot Pleco, Fish anatomy, Black goby, Poecilia caucana, Arrowtooth flounder, Paiute cutthroat trout, Serrasalmus, Pygocentrus, Greater pipefish, Lesser pipefish Develop featured article: Ocean sunfish is in danger of losing its featured article status - improvement urgently needed. Peer review: Spring cavefish, Convict cichlid, Hoplosternum littorale, Shortnose sturgeon Article requests: Missing topics about Fish, Devonian Fish Project article requests, Jörg Freyhof Picture request: Phreatobius cisternarum, Scoloplax, Nematogenys inermis, Chiapas catfish (Upload any non-copyrighted fish images to the appropriate section of Wikimedia Commons) Identify images: Identify and move the images to the appropriate section of Wikimedia Commons Collaboration: Pacific jack mackerel (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) Assessment: Assess the quality and importance of fish articles Other: Expand Fish anatomy and Fish locomotion, Create articles for the two missing families in the Perciformes (Bembropidae and Zanclorhynchidae). Merge GLAM/ARKive donated texts into articles about endangered species. If you have any question, comment or suggestion, please discussion here.

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Welcome to the Aquarium Fishes WikiProject

Please feel free to post any question, suggestion, or comment. If you'd like to help the project, please sign up at the members section in the main page. --Melanochromis 23:22, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Flickr pictures

Flickr has many wonderful pictures of aquarium fishes and some of those are under creative common licenses. So is there probably a possibility of using them in wikipedia? Has anyone ever used Flickr?

Anyway here are some really good pictures under creative common licenses:

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/33256665@N00/321612727/ a triggerfish
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/kasiaflickr/207761313/in/set-72157594225844156/ female siamese fighting fish
• http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Aquarium_Fishes&action=edit Neo Multifasciatus - a shell-dwelling cichlid
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/kasiaflickr/207740586/in/set-72157594225844156/ Kuhli Loach
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/36415983@N00/251502850/in/photostream/ a Pangasius species
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/colega/109033285/ an adorable mandarin fish
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/derfokel/201655447/ aquarium fish stall with cichlids, platies, barbs, etc. (great picture)
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/pistolpeet/145494745/ Copper-banded butterfly
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/ohira5/68989864/ a series of gorgeous pictures of two male siamese fighting fish flaring at other
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/kubina/82373653/ Lookdown Fish. Is this an aquarium fish?
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/kubina/123851903/in/set-72057594099716229/ probably a pacu or a piranna
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/kubina/131667858/in/set-72057594110042993/ beautiful picture of altrum angelfish
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/kubina/131668284/in/set-72057594110042993/ that killifish from Southeast Asia
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/kubina/131667599/in/set-72057594110042993/ good mbuna picture
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/curiousstranger/80542239/in/set-1704100/ three spot gourami (blue morph)
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/delta407/309971288/ rosy red minnow (fathead minnow)
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/stubbsuk/134108495/ a tang?
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/willismonroe/57768297/ cardinal fish (marine)
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/mauricekoop/311331503/ koi feeding frenzy
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/bfraz/41990336/ oranda goldfish?
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/goldy/147843026/in/photostream/ comet goldfish
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/salladnet/313185824/ assorted mbuna and haplochromine cichlids

All of these gorgeous pictures have some kinds of creative common license. I really hope we can use them somehow. Can someone give advice how to do this appropriately? --Melanochromis 12:26, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

It might be better to approach the owners of these pics and ask if they can be donated to the Wikimedia Commons. After all, Flickr accounts can fall into disuse (including accounts whose creators are deceased) and so a permanent collection of pictures based in the Commons is probably the way to go. I'm planning on uploading some of my own aquarium photographs from the past 12 years to accompany various articles (including ones I've performed major recent revisions on, that happen to be focused upon species that have occupied my aquarium in that period) and photographs I've taken elsewhere when touring various public aquaria etc. Since these photos will be my own work, and I've no qualms about donating them free and gratis, I'll probably licence them on the basis of them being freely distributable. Calilasseia 22:34, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

You are probably right. Maybe I'll join Flickr and see if I could persuade some to upload their pics to wikicommon. --Melanochromis 11:30, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I'm StubbsUK, please feel free to use my image http://www.flickr.com/photos/stubbsuk/134108495/. Contact me via Flickr if you require a larger version. StubbsUK 23 Dec '06

Thanks StubbsUK. I think your picture is a juvenile Red Sea sailfin tang. I just sent you a Flickr mail how to upload the picture. Cheers, --Melanochromis 10:47, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Please don't use any rainbowfish pictures unless the fish is verified not to be a hybrid. Many of the pictures in places like these and out on the web are hybridized rainbowfish. Roan Art 03:38, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I am magnetisch, the owner of the following flickr picture (top of your list): http://www.flickr.com/photos/33256665@N00/321612727/ Feel free to use it for this wikipedia article. Best regards. edit 9 February 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.67.128.25 (talk) 11:36, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

The project focus (moved from Melanochromis user talk page)

Thanks for starting up this project. Long overdue. I'm happy to help. I'd suggest worrying less about trying to be a "how-to" guide (there are lots of those on the web) but focus instead on the background facts. For example, different types of filters and filter media (pros/cons); add aquarium statistics to descriptions of important fish; create or expand articles for aquarium-specific concepts, such as fish-less cycling, filter bacteria, spawning triggers, etc.

There need to be articles about the fishkeeping industry. For example, which countries are most involved as exporters and breeders of fish, which countries buy a lot of ornamental fish, and what the different trends are (e.g., where are marine reefs popular, or arowana, or goldfish?). The value of the industry should be described in terms of money and jobs, and also the conservation issues, fish breeding/farming, release of exotic species into the wild, and questions of ethics (e.g., feeder fish).

We also need our own "stub" with a suitable graphic!

Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 10:10, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you. I think I got a bit caught up when writing the project draft. I wanted to keep it short but once I started writing, I just couldn't stop. Feel free to edit or modify the project page though. I trust you. Originally I was hesitating whether to name it wikiproject fishkeeping or wikiproject aquarium fishes, but I chose aquarium fishes to make it in line with other project names (cat breeds, dog breeds, instead of cat keeping, dog keeping). But fishkeeping should still be our main focus anyway.

Like you said I think most fishkeeping-related articles are very much underdeveloped (except a few like marine aquarium). Yesterday I was browsing articles and stubs in the Category:Fishkeeping and realized that we need to come up with a way to do this. The fishkeeping article should probably be the first focus and it can be branched out, many of its sections can be expanded into full articles. At the present (15 December 2006), this article doesn't talk about the science of fishkeeping (water chemicals, filtration, lighting, tank set-up, etc.). Do you want to start with that?

About the fishkeeping industry, the article does have this section but it doesn't cover that much. Maybe we can expand it and/or split it up to a seperate article.

Anyway, I'm putting this fishkeeping article as our project "collaboration" and we'll develop it the way you suggested. And I'm moving our discussion to the project talk page so that other people can see and might be interested to help. Cheers, --Melanochromis 11:07, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I'll create the stub template for fishkeeeping articles then --Melanochromis 11:11, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Fishkeeping stub

I created two versions. Which one do you like more?

credits to Neale for the second picture --Melanochromis 11:28, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

The second version is chosen to be the fishkeeping stub. The template name is {{fishkeeping-stub}}

--Melanochromis 08:56, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Nice, though not proposed at the usual venue, and a little on the small side, according to the stub guidelines. I found a couple more, would there be by any chance another half-dozen of these articles rattling around that you could tag as such? Alai 01:56, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Article Format

Some of my major recent revisions should give other collaborators some ideas about how to proceed with the task of upgrading the stubs. I've adopted a similar format for my revisions, but of course there's scope for expansion. Other contributors are invited to take a peek and post some suggestsions here with respect to such matters as additional subheadings, additional links etc. Calilasseia 22:37, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Great jobs, Calilasseia!! The lemon tetra and the rummy nosed tetra articles are such a big improvement from the previous stubs. --Melanochromis 11:30, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 17:32, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

"Aquarium box" for fish articles

Hi all. I noticed that the fish articles in several other non-English wikipedias have boxes for aquarium care. This is like taxobox but it includes important aquarium data like temperature, pH, water hardness, size of fish, level of difficulty in breeding, tank size, etc. In my opinion, this box looks really neat, easy to read, saves some space, and reduces the awkward repetitive information in each fish article. Do you think we can create and apply it to our aquarium fish articles somehow? To give you ideas, here're some examples:

• Swedish wikipedia - small box below the taxobox
• French wikipedia - really large box below the taxobox
• polish wikipedia - the box is inserted in the article

I like the Swedish version the best. What do you guys think? --Melanochromis 04:48, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

This is a great idea. A large number of fish articles pertaining to aquarium fish seem to have information such as this (copied from another website, maybe), and condensing them down to an aquarium box would be nice. I think a mix between Swedish and French would be nice. The Swedish seems just a little too short, but on the other hand the French one is pretty long. Temp, pH, and hardness are all numerical things that can be condensed down, and will usually only pertain to fishkeeping, thus making them good for this sort of thing. Other things such as sexual dimorphism is unnecessary for the box, since they can be usually more easily discussed in the article without fear of stretching out the box. It's nice that the French box puts how difficult the fish is, but I am not sure if that is necessary; if a fish is difficult, it is likely it will be said why the fish is difficult in the article already, so labeling the fish as easy or difficult may be less useful. Natural range where the fish comes from is something that does not need to be covered in the fishkeeping box; it can be discussed in the article itself or included in the taxobox. But yeah, I think it's a good idea to have something like this to get a quick look at a fish's requirements. MiltonT 05:39, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree, an aquarium care box would be useful. I think the Swedish box is the most concise. It would save time too when new articles are being written.--Terrapin83 03:09, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Nano reef article has been nominated for deletion

Can some project members drop by and weigh in on the WP:AFD issue, and possibly help? The primary complaint is lack of good references. Thanks! Mmoyer 18:35, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for letting us know, Mmoyer. I'm putting this and the link to the vote page in the January newsletter that appears on each member talk page. --Melanochromis 19:21, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Looks to me like it should probably be merged - unless there is a compelling reason why small tanks cannot be covered in the main article? Thoughts? MidgleyDJ 03:13, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

"Breed box" for goldfish breeds

I think it's time for the goldfish breed articles to get their "breed boxes". The taxoboxes aren't supposed to be used for animal breeds (see WikiProject Tree of Life guideline here). Dog breeds, cat breeds, and horse breeds are all using their own breed boxes instead of taxoboxes. And there are goldfish societies out there (e.g. Bristol Aquarists' Society) that set standards for each breed. But I'm not really an expert on goldfish and not sure where to start. Does anyone want to do this breed box? --Melanochromis 16:03, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Just want to update everyone that the goldfish breedbox has been created by User:DSWebb. Taxoboxes in goldfish breed articles have already been replaced with this breed boxes. --Melanochromis 09:22, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Unreferenced, unexplained edits by an editor who will never discuss changes

I am again running into problems with a user who makes repeat, almost mechanical, reversions or changes (see all the various accounts below - all belonging to the same user). This user will not discuss changes and will not use edit summaries. On one occasion he/she was banned for violations of the WP:3RR and discussed the matter with an administrator - so the user is able to use english adequately. Most recently, this user has been active at Lepidiolamprologus where the user continuously adds an unreferenced addition of an "undescribed" species to the species listing.

This user has been variously active in Cichlid (where they continuously altered the number of species to 1900, 2000, 2200 - even 2500!), Maylandia, Altolamprologus and a few other pages. The great shame here is this user seems genuinely knowledgable regarding matters aquaristic - and, in my opinion, would be a asset to this project if they could be persuaded to work in a collaborative fashion. Thoughts on how to resolve this situation would be most welcome.

Most recent activity using:

• 69.232.79.247 (talk · contribs)

Other accounts/IPs of the same user:

• 71.138.49.121 (talk · contribs)
• 71.138.49.102 (talk · contribs)
• 69.232.73.33 (talk · contribs)
• 69.232.75.32 (talk · contribs)
• 70.230.215.18 (talk · contribs)
• 70.137.65.163 (talk · contribs)
• Markfish (talk · contribs)
• 71.134.211.156 (talk · contribs)

Anyway - this is probably the best place to list and discuss this problem, as the user seems most active on various aquarium pages. MidgleyDJ 20:33, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Lepidiolamprologus has been reverted again by this user. I've removed their edits again and requested, again - that they discuss the change prior to making it. I'm not sure what more I can do? MidgleyDJ 03:29, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

It's hard dealing with this user. I knew how stubborn he was with the cichlid article. He ignored our consensus and would't communicate whatsoever. What we can do is getting a neutral admin to semi-protect the disputed article. This will prevent any anonymous IP to edit articles. If he really want to contribute, he will have to register and hopefully that will get him to talk to us. --Melanochromis 22:39, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

This user has returned again making many of the changes listed above. The IP is different again:

• 69.232.66.4 (talk · contribs)

MidgleyDJ 08:32, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

• Today this user is using 69.232.77.206 (talk · contribs). MidgleyDJ 02:27, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

New problem with this user

Today this user has been altering Jewel_cichlid adjusting the maximum length of the genus to 28 (and now 25 centimetres). I cant find any reference to support this large size (the largest I have suggests 15 cm)... and of course in traditional style this user wont discuss their changes. I'd appreciate a hand with this if someone doesnt mind helping? Attempting to contact the editor. Cheers - David. MidgleyDJ 04:11, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

New problem with this user part2

- And it appears to be a never-ending saga. This user (now IP 71.138.49.121) has now set his eye on cichlid (again-again), changing the number of species from the sources 1900 to the unsourced 2200. Despite several attempts of contact - absolutely no response other than the continued change to the article. Looking through history of the cichlid article, this user seems to have been active many times over the last few months. What to do about this? A complate IP range ban does seem excessive, but does anyone know if this can be done to a more limited extend, e.g. based on articles in specific categories? If so, an IP range ban to the articles in Category:Cichlidae would be an obvious - and in my opinion justifiable - choice. Alternatively bans limited to the specific articles this user has set his eyes on. RN1970 (talk) 17:13, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Combine goldfish breed articles?

Okay, I'll admit I'm no expert on goldfish breeds, but the large number of goldfish breed articles bothers me a little. Care requirements for many of these fish also overlap. A good number of them are stub articles alone. This seems to indicate that some of these breeds don't have enough information to be good articles. I'm not saying that a single article discussing goldfish breeds will be enough, but it seems that we have too many. For example, the Telescope breeds could all be combined; for these specific breeds, the fish are almost exactly the same except for coloration, which I am not sure is enough to grant a breed its own article. The same may be with the Comet and the Shubunkin. Also, I'm not sure of the difference between a Crown Pearlscale and a Pearlscale, so someone who knows more about goldfish can investigate. Just my 2 cents. MiltonT 05:26, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi there. I think some of the breeds do need to be grouped up. The more popular or more standard breeds are probably fine as articles. But other breeds/sub-breeds probably don't need seperate articles.

• Crown pearlscale could easily be merged into Pearlscale
• Panda moor could be merged into either Black moor or Telescope eye
• Calico fantail shouldn't even be there as it is just a color variety of Fantail (goldfish).
• Calico (fish) isn't a breed, but a color morph that could happen in many breeds. Currently, this article seems to be confusing calico coloration with Shubunkin breed (which is a calico-only breed).

--Melanochromis 21:44, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Melanochromis' method that some articles are unnecessary, but I think it really should go on a case by case basis as to what should have its own article and what should just be combined. For example, the crown pearlscale and pearlscale is a good example of two that should just be "Pearlscale", but on the other hand telescope eye and black moor should be separate even though black moor is technically a type of telescope eye. It's simply so popular and old a breed that it deserves its own article. So maybe this is something that should be taken on article by article.--Terrapin83 02:59, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I somewhat disagree about the moor issue. Even though we can say that it has been in the hobby for a long time, this makes very little of its own information to warrant itself its own article. The differences, if any, seemingly could be summarized in a paragraph, unless there is a sort of "history of the Black Moor" that one could write about to reflect this main difference in that specific color morph. Calico fantail is just a color variety of fantail, and we can agree on this. On the other hand, the black moor is also a color morph (if not the most popular color morph) of the telescope eye goldfish. Two articles would probably be redundant, and one should just redirect to the other. If nothing much new or specific can be said about the black moor that would significantly differentiate its article from the telescope eye goldfish article, than they can simply both be addressed together in the same article. MiltonT 05:33, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Given the recommended article length is 32KB why not make a single breeds of goldfish article. Certainly most breeds dont (beyond stub class, as described previously) have enough information to warrant a full length article and I agree with previous comments re: repetition. One article would, in my opinion, solve the issue. MidgleyDJ 05:36, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

all extant articles on goldfish breeds could then redirect to this page. MidgleyDJ 05:41, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

A simple format for this article may be something like:

• Breed
  • History, origin and genetics:
  • Known health issues:

Thoughts? MidgleyDJ 05:55, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Don't forget these ones too:

• Breed standards (that are used to judge a goldfish such as Bristol Society's, etc.)
• Sub-breeds or styles (especially if we are merging crown pearlscale into pearlscale or something like that)

For the black moor and telescope eye issue. I'd like to point out even though people like to think of black moor as a black variety of telescope eye, they are actually treated as seperate breeds and have different breed standards. For example, the black moor is expected to have rounder fins while a telescope eye should have pointed fins and forked tail. Anyway, a single breeds of goldfish article might be a bit extreme at this moment. Just because they are currently stubs, doesn't mean in the future they won't be expanded by editors who are goldfish experts. Most fish articles are stubs anyway. --Melanochromis 13:52, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

True, but a single breeds of goldfish article would easily accomodate all of the extant material. I know dog breeds etc have their own articles - so there's a precedent for individual "breeds". I just wonder whether a breeds of golfish article could be bought to featured article status. The development of such an article doesnt proclude future splitting of the single article should it grow to an unworkable length. MidgleyDJ 05:06, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, how about a list of goldfish breeds instead of an article? I think this isn't such a bad idea considering that the existing articles won't disappear and it's also possible to get a featured list status (it's even more attainable than a featured article status IMO). Here are some examples of featured animal lists;

• List of Anuran families
• List of mammals of Korea
• List of rabbit breeds (this one is not featured but it's a good example of how the goldfish breed list could look like).

PS. meanwhile, I'm merging Calico fantail into fantail (goldfish) and crown pearlscale into pearlscale as everyone seemed to agree with this. --Melanochromis 12:39, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Website references

Previously commercial or general hobbyist websites were usually deleted, while a few websites with good species database like Planet Catfish and Loach Onlines were typically spared. But now it seems like they all have equal chances of being removed from the articles. So, I think there are things we should really establish:

• What are the criteria to judge whether a website is referenceable (academic, extensiveness of database, usefulness to readers, etc.)?
• How do we use these websites? As references, external links, etc?
• Do we have a list of acceptable websites? Actually we already have a good list here, but do you want to reconsider websites in this list?

--Melanochromis 22:21, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not in favour of using hobbyist websites as references. In my opinion, the kind of information that can be obtained from most hobbyist websites is also available in print and I'd feel more comfortable about using print references for the "in the aquarium" sections. Allowing some "good" hobbyists websites is problematic in that it opens the door for the inclusion of many, many, many other hobbyist websites. To give you an example uisng two good websites. I am perfectly comfortable using Dr. Michael Olivers www.malawicichlids.com as a source of information. It's primarily an academic site. In contrast I'm opposed to using Dr. George Reclos's www.malawicichlidhomepage.com as it is primarily a hobbyist website. Both are good sites - but I'd only use the former as a reference. MidgleyDJ 03:47, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I have to disagree with the above in some respects, since most of the information on rainbowfish that is in print is wrong. IMO reputable web sites (or forums) that cater to specific types of fishes are gold mines of information that you will not find on generalist sites. These are the people that actually keep the fish in aquaria and are the ones who really know what they are doing. That means that some or all of the information isn't listed in some handy-dandy database -- you have to dig for it. Some of the other sites that DO have databases or easy to find information on these types of fish have the *wrong* information. So, do you list a site with easy to find and possibly wrong information, or a site that someone may have to post a question but get the right information? Dat der's the question, I think. I'd think it a shame if my Bowheads! was removed because 75% of the information on rainbowfish out there on the web is wrong. We see it all the time in the forums. Roan Art 03:49, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

... and I'd argue that the "correct" information you are saying is on your (and other(s) ) website comes from some primary source. If not, it's original research that should not be published in Wikipedia - see WP:OR. MidgleyDJ 03:52, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree that academic sources are best, but if hobbyist/commercial websites are deleted then the user who deletes them should replace it with an academic source. Also, how many academic papers are written on care/feeding/etc of fish species? Maybe hobbyist journals and books would be good sources for this.--Terrapin83 03:04, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Hobbyist websites are quite different to printed material produced for the hobby. Printed material, while it may be wrong, can at least be verified. My concern also is that allowing one (two, three or more) hobbyist websites is problematic (as I've discussed above). We (aquarists) need to be aware that what the fish eats in the wild is MUCH more important than which brand of flakes it enjoys in someone's tank in north-west Queensland. I completely support this project -- and it's important to note that certain species are popular with aquarists -- but we need to remember the articles primarily concern the fishes biology, geography etc. MidgleyDJ 05:17, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I think we need to remember that the articles have to be well-rounded. If a fish is important to humans as game fish, food fish, or aquarium fish, then that is what the article has to be about too. Anyway, back to the topic -- personally I don't think we can delete all the aquarium sources. It should be a case by case basis, and that's exactly why we have this list (which everyone should have look and update it every once in a while by the way). The reality is that there are good quality websites out there among the generic ones, so why not take advantage of them? Especially when the articles don't have any other references. I'd rather see an article with a Planet Catfish reference, rather than an article with no reference at all (not counting the default FishBase reference of course). --Melanochromis 15:20, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Just for clarity, I'm not suggesting articles should not be well rounded - or should not include information about aquarium or aquacultural/food use - I'm saying it's unfortunate when the primary focus of the article is about aquarium use only (and implies the fish is only important because it's kept in aquariums). For examples of articles in this sad state see: Trichogaster_leerii, Trichogaster_trichopterus etc.

It remains my opinion that it is difficult to select certain hobbyist websites that are suitable reference sources - while rejecting others. It's not impossible - it's just difficult. I also appreciate the value of planet catfish and loaches online and that they are slightly different from standard hobbyists websites - but they are still difficult to verify (see WP:V). I also agree that some referncing is better than none, but in most cases that is not what has been happening. In many articles hobbyist websites were (and still are in some cases) listed simply in the external links - and are not used as references. Here's a few fairly typical examples: Corydoras_sterbai, Otocinclus_cocama. I personally cannot see the advantage in listing the planet catfish link in this fashion and I dont think it fits in with Wikipedia's external links policy WP:EL. Where I've found this previously, I've removed planetcatfish (and other hobbyist websites) from articles when it is used in this fashion. I've not generally removed it if it is used as a reference - this also applies to loaches online. In saying that it needs to be clear in the article which statements are being attributed to a particular reference. MidgleyDJ 22:29, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

IMO, one way we can handle this is by saying something like "there are some sources that say blah blah blah" or "some hobbyists have this experience" and therefore use some aquarium websites as "references." This lets the reader know what sort of credibility such statements have. I'd have to agree that print or scientific sources are better; these sources are indeed more verifiable and generally have well regarded authors. This allows us to cover a broader view. Admittedly this may reduce some of the quality of information, but if information comes from SOMEWHERE, then it should be attributed, even if there isn't credibility. This way, it's less like original research and it's more like an article that actually has citations.

BTW, IMO there are many fishes that ARE only important because they are kept in aquariums. On the other hand, it is quite true that these fish shouldn't have articles only discussing their aquarium habits and how to care for them, but also discuss how these fish would behave in the wild. MiltonT 01:53, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

With respect, I have to disagree with the last part of your comment. It's highly homo-centric. Biological species (whether they be fish, plants or whatever) are notable in their own right. Their aquarium use is an aside. I'm not suggesting this aside is unimportant - but it's not the primary focus of species articles. Also re: earlier comments - sources have to be able to be verified, hobbyists websites (for the most part) are not verifiable sources. The information on most aquarium websites has a source -- otherwise it's OR -- and that what's we should be citing. Sure this may mean actually looking beyond google. MidgleyDJ 04:46, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

As MidgleyDJ says, it's important not to overstate the value of fish as aquarium pets. Piranhas may be cool as aquarium fish, but their greater importance is as key predators in Amazon ecosystems and as a food fish for local peoples. Some fish also have additional importance as lab animals (e.g. danios, ricefish, poecilids) that is often overlooked by aquarists but crucial in particular fields of biological research. In terms of recommending web sites as references, my suggestion would be to favour sites maintained by authors who have published books or magazine articles. At the least, this would imply their work has reached a certain standard amenable to editorial review. So for example Peter Cottle's Danios & Devarios web site would be 'trustworthy' at some level because his work has been reviewed and published.[1] The same goes for Julian Dignall at Planet Catfish, Bob Fenner at Wet Web Media, and so on. This isn't to exclude sites authored by non-published individuals, but it is at least a verifiable benchmark against which other sites might be compared in terms of quality, scope, reliability, etc. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 14:17, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Neale that's a very good idea, thanks! MidgleyDJ 18:41, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Neale's ideas sound like a practical way to do it. In addition to authors with published works as the benchmark, I'll add some more considerations to criteria for aquarium websites;

• It must be in an article or database format (no forum post, personal blog, online diary or such)
• When applicable, it must have an author's real name, not a user name or screen name (to be citable or verifiable).
• It must not be a commercial website.

If everyone agrees on this, I'll put it on the project page as established criteria. And maybe it's time to look at our list of references and get rid the ones that can't be used as references. --Melanochromis 21:50, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd also suggest we make some note about the need for citations in text - ie: it needs to be clear which statements are sources from information at that website. It's not good, in my opinion, to include references in a reference list that are not cited in the text. I'd also recommend that it be made it clear that these sites should be used as references - and not external links (unless they meet the guidelines for external links - WP:EL). MidgleyDJ 22:42, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

re: commercial web sites -- I don't think these are necessarily bad or should be excluded out of hand. For example, the PFK web site is a commerical web site, but the news items it publishes are information rich, usually citing scientific papers that wouldn't otherwise be accessible to aquarists. In many places I've used such pages as references, since quoting a fishkeeping magazine web site is presumably no worse that citing any other media web site, like the BBC. Furthermore, most of the larger web sites simply because of their need for bandwidth have some level of commerical business behind them, whether advertising, sales of photographs, links to book stores, or whatever. So rather than excluding commerical web sites, the line should be drawn between commerical sites that offer original information not otherwise available and commerical sites that merely reprint information from other sources. You can also look at the motive behind the link or reference: if the commercial page is clearly relevant, like a magazine web site news article about UK animal protection law and the fishkeeping industry, then it should be included. If the link is not directly relevant but merely to a commercial page designed to get a sale, for example a reference on the protein skimmer page to the catalogue entry of a fishkeeping retailer, then the link should be removed. Where a link is borderline between these two, the aim should be to reject the commercial link if a non-commercial link (or book/paper reference) of equal or better quality and relevance can be found. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 09:27, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me Neale. I've no issue at all with any printed aquarium literature being used as "references" provided it's clear which information comes from that source. MidgleyDJ 09:57, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

re: commercial web sites I don't think anyone here is opposing the use of PFK and other magazines as references. I'm the one who put PFK in the WP:AQF list of references and I didn't think of online versions of magazines and other news media as commercial websites. The "no commercial" policy was put there to prevent potential spamming. But I think you're right to point out that they are commercial in a way. So when this is added to the project page, I'll make sure the wording is clear that online versions of magazines and other news media are ok to use. --Melanochromis 22:46, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

While not disagreeing at all, it seems to me that some PFK articles are no more than glorified adverts.--Mummymonkey 22:38, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Announcing WP:Aquarium Fishes Awards!!

I'm happy to announce the new addition to our WP: the awards!! Please have a look at this draft. Let me know if you think the nomination process is practical or not. I just want to let everyone see the draft first before it became official. --Melanochromis 06:18, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea, though I think you'll need to wait until there are a reasonable number of members of the group before handing them out becomes practical (or worthwhile). Otherwise, we'll just give each other the awards and be done by the end of the year! Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 10:08, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Great! This may encourage the creation of more "featured"-quality articles.--Terrapin83 04:02, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm moving this awards to the project page with a note that it's on hold until we have more members. --Melanochromis 23:49, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Aquarium Fishes Awards Purpose To recognize WikiProject Aquarium Fishes members who greatly contribute to fishkeeping and aquarium fishes on wikipedia. To encourage WikiProject Aquarium Fishes members to produce more good quality works especially the featured articles. Types of Awards The Golden Guppy Award is given to any member who makes an outstanding contribution to fishkeeping and aquarium fishes on wikipedia. For example, an editor who has single-handedly produced a featured article is qualified for this award. The Golden Discus Award is given to any member who makes an exceptional contribution to fishkeeping and aquarium fishes on wikipedia. For example, an editor who has single-handedly produced FIVE featured articles is qualified for this award. Procedure 1. To nominate a member for an award, please post your proposal on the Wikiproject talk page with a short description of the nominee's contribution to fishkeeping and aquarium fishes on wikipedia. Specify the type of award you are proposing and why you think the nominee should be awarded. 2. All other project members are invited to express their opinions whether they "support", "oppose", or are "neutral" with the nomination. 3. There must be at least 10 members responding to the nomination. If more than 75% of all responding members "support" the nomination, the nominee is given the award. The award will be posted on the recipient talk page. If wished the recipient can place the award to display in his/her user page. 4. The nomination expires in 15 days after the date of proposal. If the nomination expired without gaining enough votes, the candidate is not disqualified for future nominations. He/she can be re-nominated after a reasonable period of time. --Melanochromis 06:18, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Mayan cichlid move proposal

I've proposed that the Mayan cichlid article should be moved to its scientific name: Cichlasoma urophthalmus. In this case the common name is:

• not universal in the fishkeeping hobby. Its unheard of in Australia.
• not used at all outside the aquarium or fishing hobbies.
• ambiguous - there are many other common names for this species.
• not the fishbase standard common name.

Please discuss this issue - and your thoughts on the move @ Talk:Mayan cichlid. Cheers, David. MidgleyDJ 04:41, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

The Fish Quiz

I'm happy to announce that the Fish Portal has added a new feature - The Fish Quiz!! Come test your knowledge, interact with other fish editors, try to win the game and have your name honored in the Hall of Fame, and have a fun break from editing wikipedia. Cheers --Melanochromis 08:26, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposed fish article naming standards change

WikiProject Fishes is discussing a proposed change in naming standards for article titles. If the change is made, this project's article naming standards would need to be changed as well in order to avoid conflicting guidelines. Your feedback would be appreciated at the WikiProject Fishes talk page here. -- Neil916 (Talk) 00:12, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

photo request albino Pelvicachromis pulcher

Does anyone have access to a photo of the albino form of P. pulcher that could be used in the Pelvicachromis pulcher article? Cheers, David. MidgleyDJ 21:36, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

feature article?

I'm unsure how Aquarium made featured article status with virtually no in text referencing. Thoughts? MidgleyDJ 02:09, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Listed for Feature Article review. MidgleyDJ 02:32, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Aquarium has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.MidgleyDJ 02:38, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Created Filter (aquarium)

I created a short-ish article on aquarium filtration today. Please expand, review and link as you think appropriate. MidgleyDJ 05:46, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Wow Midgley, I'm impressed. You did a lot of great jobs lately (I on the other hand have been pretty lazy). Kudos! --Melanochromis 15:42, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Melanochromis, thanks! It's still very much in a draft format, and definately needs expansion in some areas. Cheers, David. MidgleyDJ 19:32, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

More kudos! What a great article. You certainly seem to have covered the basics, and the photos are great! Mmoyer 15:00, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Collaboration on Aquarium

Are we as a group interested in rescuing Aquarium from it's de-listing as a featured article? In it's current state it's not featured article quality and will likely be removed and listed as a former featured article. It's a big article and I dont have time myself to do all of it. If we can get 3-4 editors who are willing to help please indicate your willingness here: MidgleyDJ 23:32, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I'll try to do what I can, but unfortunately I lack textual sources. The Complete Aquarium by Peter W. Scott is a great resource that is listed in the article's references section, however I do not currently have a copy. I am sure a fair amount of referencing could be done with this book in hand. The main thing is that the article reached its featured status years ago, and so it's internet references have all become broken links already. MiltonT 04:57, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Aquarium has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:36, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

All right, based on some of the recommendations given by SandyGeorgia I have rather heavily formatted the article and played with it quite a bit. A list is given below of some of the items mentioned that I have not done, with my notes:

• "Because this is the type of article that attracts photo additions, someone should doublecheck FairUse on all images." (I'm not sure how to even do this.)
• "Blue-linked URLs in References that need to be formatted, see WP:CITE/ES or cite templates." (I didn't format them as the links are all broken and we should replace them with better, live references.)
• "Incorrect use of WP:DASH throughout; hyphens, en-dashes and em-dashes need to be sorted out." (I played around with this, but someone doublecheck that it's correct.)
• "Attention to Wikilinking will be needed: for example, horticulturists." (Well, I linked horticulturists, but there's bound to be more links necessary.)
• "Thorough copyedit will be needed." (I haven't read the entire article yet, but I'll try to get to this.)

Of course, our biggest problem is the lack of in-text citations. I've added several, but of course this massive article will need much more.MiltonT 05:33, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Added one reference and some old images. Working on citations. MidgleyDJ 08:26, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm also proposing that quite a bit of the content at Aquarium should be merged into Fishkeeping as it's about care of aquarium inhabitants and not about "aquariums" per se. Comments, thoughts? MidgleyDJ 10:58, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

The images are great, MidgleyDJ. I think the work we're doing is great so far. We'll need two new articles to help out, though; we need an aquarium heater article and we'll need a freshwater aquarium article. This will make one of the red links blue (freshwater aquarium) and take out an unnecessary section (aquarium heater). MiltonT 17:33, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree. That's a great picture. Can't believe that was almost a 100 year old. Anyway, Aquarium and Fishkeeping as seperate articles are quite confusing to me, and I'm not so sure how to divide contents into these two articles. They are pretty much overlapping at this moment. A lot of things in fishkeeping seem like they should rather be in the aquarium article, and vice versa. How do we make sense of this? --Melanochromis 22:11, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

It's sort of a fine line between the two articles. Fishkeeping and the Aquarium are almost the very same thing, but do not fit perfectly together as fishkeeping existed before aquaria and the aquarium contain more than fish. Despite this, MidgleyDJ and I came to the conclusion that the aquarium should be about the actual aquarium itself, and related contraptions that are often used with aquaria for the smooth running of things. Basically, the machinery behind the glass box, and some history about its use. Aquarium maintenance concepts were moved to fishkeeping as these dealt with the animals went into the aquarium; sure the aquarium is important, but the argument is that any container, including ponds, will experience these effects. Also, rules about stocking and other such current information were mostly to do with fish anyway. That's the reasoning, I believe. MiltonT 13:48, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I concur, it is confusing :-). My view is that Fishkeeping is the practice of keeping fish (which can also be applied to invertebrates). This can be done in vessels other than aquariums (such as ponds). The Aquarium article should be about the design/styles, history of the aquarium (as a fishkeeping device) not about how to keep things alive in water (fishkeeping). It's a fine line I know, but it is such a large topic I think it is best dealt with in this fashion. To compound the confusion "aquariums" are also establishments that contain aquaria (aquatic zoos!). MidgleyDJ 05:47, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Created Heater (aquarium) and linked to Aquarium. MidgleyDJ 23:57, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

At this point I'm kind of stuck, and don't know what else to contribute. I've noticed MidgleyDJ hasn't put anything in the past couple days either. Proofreading efforts by various, random members are proving to be rather helpful. However, I'm worried that there are still some large, important elements that we are forgetting to mention. At this point I can think of just novelty aquarium designs, which could probably be discussed in slightly more detail; at the very least, I think this article is at least a good one, if not a featured quality one. Anyone want to take a look at that article and talk about its completeness (and everything else)? We're also still missing a few references here and there; some facts in there I'm not sure are true, and they desperately need either a good reference, a reference cited that says otherwise so we can correct the fact, or simply be clipped out (despite how interesting it might be that Pepys might have seen a paradisefish way before they were supposed to have been imported). We also need references for other stuff, such as the filtration paragraph or the classifications of aquaria; these probably do need to be cited; at least, better safe than sorry about this in-line referencing, anyway. On that note, I'll try to see what resources I have to cite some of these things, though for the stuff in the history section I'm stuck since I haven't seen anything indicating those facts that I labeled need references... I think this article can be saved from being totally de-moted, if at least it's just a Good Article and not Featured anymore. MiltonT 02:20, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Aquarium template

I've worked a little bit on creating a template that can be placed at the bottom of aquarium fish-related pages. I haven't made it into an actual template yet, though. This template is still not complete. Tell me what name we should put the template under (I was just thinking "aquarium" to be simple). Also, tell me any articles that are important yet still missing from this template (or add them yourself). Let me know if you don't even think we should use a template at all. Let me know what you guys think. MiltonT 20:27, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

This is really a great idea. Very useful to readers. Here're some fishkeeping magazine articles I found: Practical Fishkeeping, Tropical Fish Hobbyist, Koi (magazine). I also wonder if we can fit a link to fishkeeping in the template somehow. Maybe "Aquarium and Fishkeeping" as the template title? What do you think? --Melanochromis 22:04, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Looks good Milton. re: Nano reef I am currently trying to get this merged into either a much expanded Marine aquarium (which includes Reef aquarium) or at the very least into Reef aquarium. I've discussed this on Talk:Reef aquarium and Talk:Nano reef if anyone would like to offer their 2c. I cant see the point in separating nano, picto, femto reefs from standard reef aquariums (or for that matter from marine aquariums). Otherwise we may as well create the cichlid aquarium, planted aquarium, south american biotope aquarium etc. MidgleyDJ 22:19, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I added the magazines to the bottom and Fishkeeping as a link in the title. The links to the aquarium types will be removed as soon as the articles are actually merged. Templates are, after all, relatively easy to edit. Anyone else want to input? I'll put it under Template:Aquarium if no one has any qualms with that. I also put hobby in the title so as to exclude public aquariums overall. MiltonT 01:10, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

See the actual template at Template:Aquarium. Adding this template automatically categorizes an article under fishkeeping, but that can be taken out if it's a problem. MiltonT 18:15, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Having the template carrying the fishkeeping category is an innovative idea I think. But I'm afraid it's potentially problematic. The main reason is that people wouldn't expect that a normal template (other than administrative banners and userboxes) is carrying a category. Because of such, deleters might try to delete the template (like they tried with our stub template) without being aware of the hidden category, or categorizers might have a hard time if they dicide to reorganize the cats (merging, upmerging, seperating, creating subcats, or whatever they do). Then there are also the bots who probably aren't programmed to deal with unconventional categorization. The chance of this happening might not be so high, but I guess it's better to be safe. --Melanochromis 18:59, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

PS. IMO I think the aquarium template should placed before the stub template, so that the stub tag would appear at the bottom of the article. --Melanochromis 19:06, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I see your point, I just thought it was kind of nifty, lol; I have seen it used previously in other articles. I have made the template collapsible; the template will appear collapsed by default, and can be opened up to see the other links. MiltonT 20:15, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Marine/reef/micro/nano/femto etc aquarium

Afternoon all -

Wondering if anyone would like to comment on the merge proposals for Reef aquarium, Nano reef. Near as I can tell they are both Marine aquariums and should be merged into higher quality, expanded version of that article. If we are to make a featured article of Marine aquarium I think this is the only way forward. Thoughts? At the very least, it's my view that Reef aquarium & Nano reef should be merged. Would really appreciate feedback on this prior to taking any bold action :P Cheers, David. MidgleyDJ 05:55, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Merged Nano reef into Reef aquarium. The latter remains poorly referenced MidgleyDJ 21:30, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi David. That Nano reef article has been proposed for deletion/merge before and the result was to keep it. Our project fellow, User:Mmoyer, was the one who saved it and this article was her work. There's also User:Dark jedi requiem who has voiced that he opposed this merge. I think you should notify both of the editors that the article was merged. They might have missed seeing it in their watchlist. --Melanochromis 22:06, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Melanochromis - Will do. The AfD is about deletion, not merging - but I'll make sure I contact both editors. MidgleyDJ 22:44, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Done. Messages left at: User_talk:Dark_jedi_requiem#Nano_reef & User_talk:Mmoyer#Nano_reef. MidgleyDJ 22:49, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Nice job on the merge. Kudos to MidgleyDJ ! Mmoyer 16:57, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Forums (and web sites) as references

I'm a little alarmed by recent edits where people have deleted one forum link and replaced it with their own [2], or othewise arranged things so their forum to the top of the list [3].

My suggestion is simple: No forums or community web sites. The temptation is too strong for people to use Wikipedia as a means to get people to visit their web site. Also, forums and community sites aren't really scientifically sound since they are, almost by their nature, run by amateurs and without editorial control.

Further, I'd suggest restricting web sites much more vigorously, to web sites either run by published authors (e.g. Planet Catfish) or where they publish information that doesn't exist in book format (e.g. Loaches Online). Where there is a rich hobby literature (e.g. reef tank fishkeeping) we should simply use books for references.

Otherwise, we have to be making judgement calls on whether a web site is "valid" as a reference, and it ends up with editors simply arbitrarily pruning the list just to keep it short. Except for inline references (which I have no problem linking to web pages) I'd suggest that the vague "external links" section be kept to two or three sites, tops. I'm sure Yahoo has categories for aquarium stuff: direct people there instead of listing things here.

Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 14:43, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Inline reference, inline references, inline references! No article can have too many! But most articles have too many external references, IMO. ChicagoPimp 15:18, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

There is already an established guideline at Wikipedia:External links. See "Links normally to be avoided", item #9 (Don't link to search engine results, web directories, and aggregated results pages), item #10 (Don't link to social networking sites, discussion forums, or USENET), and #11 (Don't link to blogs or personal web pages, except those written by a recognized authority). Feel free to delete such links upon sight, use an edit summary of "Removed inappropriate external links per WP:EL." They are similarly inappropriate as inline citations, as failing the policy at Wikipedia:Attribution (formerly Wikipedia:Reliable Sources. Neil916 (Talk) 15:59, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Right, Wikipedia already discourages external links like these. I have seen a number of links that are quite disconcerting, such as protein skimmer on one page being a direct link to an online store selling protein skimmers rather than a resource discussing what they are. Even with my past affiliation with some of these sites it pains me to see these linked as resources; with articles written by anyone who feels like it, rarely are they any more credible than Wikipedia itself. The lengthy list of links in the Reef article is a prime example of what Wikipedia is not. I agree that, for the most part, we shouldn't have external links at all at most of these pages, just replace these with inline references if they are relevant.MiltonT 16:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Neale, Neil and Milton - I removed all the links from Reef aquarium on April 3rd when proposing various mergers as I believed all of them to be spam. I replaced them with a single link to the Open Directory Project using this template {{Dmoz}}. It's what WP:EL recommends. MidgleyDJ 21:29, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Also keep in mind that if someone (especially anon editors from changing IP addresses) is persistent in re-adding their links, that there are other anti-spam resources available on Wikipedia, especially the Site-wide spam blacklist which prevents an editor from being able to save any changes that contain a link to their website. The website operators have a financial incentive to be persistent in re-adding inappropriate links, whereas we're all doing this for "fun", so the blacklist tends to even the playing field. If you really want to get a good taste of how nasty some of those people can be, try spending some time cleaning up the links to fishing websites on game fish or angling articles, Bass fishing for example...  :) Neil916 (Talk) 22:49, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Time to cull the references

Hello all. I think it is time to re-do the references. By building a "white list" we're arbritarily choosing some and leaving out others, and so (perhaps understandably) owners of left-out web sites are not just adding links but changing the existing ones. I think that crosses the line.

Let's build up a list of books and magazine articles that we can refer to. Baensch, Aqualog, TFH Atlas, etc. We can arrange them by subject. Instead of web sites, we can use the standard DMOZ external link at the end of each article, and let DMOZ worry about who's a spammer and who's not. There's really no need to use a marine fishkeeping forum as a reference when there are literally hundreds of really good books out there. Thoughts? Neale Monks 14:17, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think there should be a list of "approved" references. It's sending the wrong message that if you use something from these particular sources, they're somehow better than other sources, when that's not necessarily the case. Additionally, it would be impossible to list every possible valid source for information. Providing a reminder for the editors to make reference to Wikipedia:Reliable Sources should be sufficient, with perhaps another reminder that internet forum messages and anecdotal stories, even if they're incredibly useful, don't meet the standards of Wikipedia. When I first started editing here, it was one of the mistakes I made (along with cut-and-pasting large sections of text from websites). Neil916 (Talk) 15:42, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough, but how do we stop the various fish clubs and forums adding their links? Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 16:16, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

The same way we do now; revert the addition with a polite note that the link is not suitable per WP:EL. Neil916 (Talk) 16:56, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Also per WP:Spam. Thanks for reverting the recent spams. If this user tries it again. Here's the first warning template {{uw-spam1}} --Melanochromis 17:05, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Neale & Neil, I like Neale's idea of a list of useful reference material. I understand Neil's concerns, perhaps the best way to address them is to have a list of Useful reference material instead. That way it's not exclusive, it's simply a list. A section on external links and on the use of websites as references would also be useful. I agree re: the use of {{dmoz}} as it solves most of the problems re: forums, websites and clubs and think it should be used widely to combat the spam problem. MidgleyDJ 21:59, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

What to do with Aquarium_Fish_clubs

Does anyone know what we should do with Aquarium_Fish_clubs. It doesnt look like an encyclopedia article to me. WP isnt a list of aquarium clubs (surely). If it's going to be an encyclopedia article it's going to need drastic re-writing. MidgleyDJ 06:30, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I trashed it, and created something much simpler, linking to the DMOZ site instead. Neale Monks 08:28, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I was sure the article was on its way to deletion. Apparently not. If someone can find a longer history for aquarium fish clubs, that'd be cool to add. MiltonT 19:37, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Peer review of Convict cichlid and a question

Afternoon all -

I'd appreciate it if someone could check Convict cichlid over prior to submitting it for good article review. I'm also unsure what to do with Honduran red point. Honduran red points are regarded by some as a locality "morph" of A. nigrofasciatus. Should a section on Convict cichlid deal with this and link to the article on Honduran red points? Or should the article be merged. Fishbase is unhelpful on the issue and I would appreciate the feedback of others. Cheers, David. MidgleyDJ 04:22, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

At this point I might be more conservative and let the other article remain. GoogleScholar gave me no indication that this has actually been scientifically investigated, so I'm not sure if you'd find a credible reference to back up either side, but since I only gave a few seconds for that search, perhaps a more in-depth search would yield something. However, a good source goes a long way; if I knew more about the subject I might have a different opinion. MiltonT 07:56, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd leave all the morphs in Convict cichlid pending formal identification. That would seem, to me, to be the easiest way to be consistent. Otherwise we'd have to create articles for all the L-number plecs and unnamed mbuna, some of which may be new species but many are merely geographical variants that aquarists often assume are new species. You'd also have to create separate articles for different stocks of commercially important (or recreationally important) fish such as Atlantic salmon that occur in distinctive morphs in different places, especially landlocked lakes, inland seas, etc. Far better surely to have a taxonomy section listing geographical races and/or subspecies, perhaps with a comment that "some authors believe that..." where the authors in question are fish taxonomists cited as inline references to published papers rather than vague comments from aquarium or angling books! Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 12:27, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Ah, when you put it that way, Neale, it makes sense to go that way. MiltonT 17:03, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

So I assume you are both happy to merge the two articles with a view to split when/if evidence of their taxonomic differences becomes available? MidgleyDJ 17:39, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Go for it. MiltonT 02:20, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

External links: a proposal.

To curtail the efforts of web site spammers who want to use Wikipedia articles to link to their fishkeeping clubs, retail stores, etc., I'm making a proposal that we do the following:

• 1. Restrict links to web pages to inline references. Firstly, these are more difficult to create, so casual spammers won't bother. Secondly, it is much easier to see if the given web site supports the line of text it is linked to. If it's irrelevant, all you do is delete it. If it's useful and verifiable, leave it in.
• 2. Limit external links to DMOZ categories. It isn't difficult for legitimate site owners to add their links to this directory, and because it categorises them and arranges them alphabetically, it is fair to all site owners. As it is now, people delete rival sites and add their own.

As such, I propose we delete completely the Aquarium Care References list of web site references: it is simply a temptation for people to add their own sites to the list, and at the end becomes a question of random pruning to keep the list manageable, which isn't fair to anyone. Some examples are listed below. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 14:19, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

• Template:Dmoz
• Template:Dmoz
• Template:Dmoz
• Template:Dmoz
• Template:Dmoz

Interesting concept, but I'd think that such a proposal would need to be made on the site-wide policy at WP:EL. I don't know if an individual WikiProject can override site-wide policy in either a more or less restrictive manner. I've posted the question over on the talk page for WP:EL (here's a link: [4]) to see if someone knows that answer. If this type of thing were permitted, I don't see why a spammer couldn't just start his own "WikiProject EverythingGoes" with specific rules overriding the site-wide rules, and with some articles being part of several WikiProjects, trying to wade through multiple, possibly conflicting, rule sets would quickly become a nightmare. Neil916 (Talk) 17:20, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. But what we're seeing at the moment is a handful of persistent spammers adding their forum or whatever to the list of references here plus one or more aquarium articles. If we remove the list of references here, we at least neutralise that, and we can encourage people to [a] use inline references and [b] use DMOZ links for "external link" sections rather than arbitrarily picking one or two reef fish forums or whatever. Neale Monks 17:58, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

The best approach may be to remind the users of Wikipedia's policy on spam/external links, and if they persist, to enlist the help of the site-wide spam blacklist. Many newcomers find the fact that Wikipedia is so easy to edit as an open invitation to link to their sites and are unaware of the policies prohibiting that. Or they attempt to push their linkspamming anyway despite ample warnings. Just keep track of their attempts to add the links, make sure to use the {{uw-spam1}}, {{uw-spam2}}, {{uw-spam3}}, and {{uw-spam4}} notices, and have their site blacklisted if they are persistent despite warnings. See User:Neil916/spam for an example of how I kept track of some of these (and feel free to use that actual page if you're so inclined, I haven't been maintaining it in recent months). When the number of diffs exceeded a certain level, all the information was right there at my fingertips for reporting them to the blacklist. Neil916 (Talk) 18:07, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

A lot of things in wikipedia attract spammers. Our project "list of references" is just becoming one of those. IMO I think wikipedia is really weak on this as it doesn't have any strong or effective measures against spammers (or vandals or trolls). We just have to keep reverting them and use various warnings as described by User Talk:Neil916 and hopefully getting some admin to block the spammers eventually. Re: the guidelines. Our current policy already states that we prefer inline references and that the use of Dmoz is encouraged for external links. We just have to educate people. Re: the project list of references. I can move it to a subpage (like the newsletter subpage) if it's such a problem. The project page is getting a bit too long anyway. --Melanochromis 19:24, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Honestly Melanochromis, I'd suggest deleting it entirely. Replace with explanations of how to create inline references for Fishbase, web sites, and books, and then explanations of how to link to DMOZ. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 19:43, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I think the list is a useful tool for editors, maybe not for the most knowledgeable editors, but for many others, it's a good place to start. And we can't just give up to the spammers or vandals. The fish article for example was vandalized countless times, that doesn't mean the article deserves to be deleted. It's not the right reaction. A part of being a wikipedia editor is dealing with spams and vandalism. It's annoying a lot, I know, but that's wikipedia. We have to fight them with whatever tools we have, but not taking a page or a section of a page away just because it might be a target. Anyway, I think we are talking about two different things. Wasn't your proposal about external links? This list is not a list of external links, but references (which preferbly should be used as inline references, of course). --Melanochromis 20:05, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

According to WP:EL, external links need to offer something unique to the article, beyond what the content of a future, hypothetical featured version of the article should include. On these ground most spammers websites can be excluded/reverted. I think Neale's idea to remove the list of "reference websites" is a good one. I think the project page instead should reiterated the policy at WP:EL, explanations of the {{dmoz}} and it's use and explicity state that there are tools to blacklist spammers. Neil's spam cheat sheets are very useful - something we might consider at the project level. If there's a collaborative approach to "de-spamming" fish pages then I think that would also work well and I'm happy to help. Cheers, David. MidgleyDJ 19:47, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

To-do list

Per request, the to-do list from WP:FISH now appears at the top of our talk page. To edit their list from this page, click the small edit button at the bottom right hand corner of their section. MiltonT 02:01, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I took the liberty to change the templates to Wikipedia:WikiProject Aquarium Fishes/to do and Wikipedia:WikiProject Fishes/to do which are the more current ones. These two templates are used in WP:FISH, WP:AQF as well as Portal:Fish. You can also place them in your own user page just like I did for my user page. --Melanochromis 20:01, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Changed Wikipedia:WikiProject Fishes/to do to link to save space. --Melanochromis 20:13, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Heater (aquarium) has been done. Cheers, David. MidgleyDJ 21:55, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Do we need an article on blackwater tonic? I'm not in favour. MidgleyDJ 07:51, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, agreed. We can discuss blackwater tonic under freshwater aquarium. MiltonT 12:55, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Article naming queries

Garnet tetra (Hemigrammus pulcher)

What do I call an article on this fish? Fishbase lists the common name as the "Garnet tetra", Baensch says "Pretty tetra" or "Black wedge tetra". It's a species I'm not that familiar with. Mills (1993) calls it the "Pretty tetra", Axelrod & Vorderwinkler (1995) use "Garnet tetra" and "Pretty tetra", older aquarium books use "Black wedge tetra". Is this a case for using Hemigrammus pulcher? MidgleyDJ 08:27, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Call it Hemigrammus pulcher. The "pretty tetra" name is obviously based on the "pulcher" part of its name. Fishbase reports that name as being used in the US, but both Mills and Vevers were British, so I guess it must be used in the UK as well. That said, I don't recall this fish much in the shops here, and I've never even heard of a "garnet tetra". Possibly that is its name in the wild? (In the same way the hobby's "upside down catfish" are always "squeakers" in Africa.) Regardless, it quite clearly lacks a standard common name. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 09:36, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Electric yellow

Thoughts on what to do with this article would be appreciated. Here's the problem:

• The electric yellow form of this species Labidochromis caeruleus is the most commonly available form of the species. Is this like having an article called "white convict cichlids"?
• Most forms are blue (w/ the most of the yellow exceptions coming from the central-western short of Lake Malawi)
• I agree the common name is indeed in common use - but it's a problem for the rest of the forms of the species - which dont share it's common name.

Thoughts? Cheers, David. MidgleyDJ 04:27, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

There are two ways to handle this. Either we create pages for "breeds" in the exact same way as we do for dogs and cats, or else we lump varieties of single species onto one page, and separate them only within that page in a "Varieties" subsection or equiavlent. I would tend to favour the latter approach simply because (apart from goldfish and koi) breeds of ornamental fishes are rather poorly defined. There are no "standards" as there are for dog breeds, for example. In this particular example, what we are talking about are geographical varieties of Labidochromis caeruleus that happen to be traded as such. This is not unusual. You see a similar thing with many other cichlids. e.g., Pelvicachromis taeniatus and Pseudotropheus zebra. Cheers, Neale

The latter approach sounds good to me - anyone else want to comment? MidgleyDJ 10:43, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Three spot gourami

We are currently discussing what to do with the name of this article at Talk:Three spot gourami. Feel free to join in! MidgleyDJ 21:21, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Dwarf Upside-down Catfish

I disagree that this is an acceptable common name. I have not ever seen this common name used to refer to Synodontis nigriventris; with a google search, I find very few hits, including one that indicates this common name is used for another species of Synodontis. FishBase calls this the "Blotched upside-down catfish", Axelrod calls it the "Black-bellied upside-down catfish", and many other sources simply list "Upside-down catfish", as the title had been before. IMO, if "Upside-down catfish" is inappropriate, the scientific name should be used. MiltonT 20:34, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

My understanding is that Synodontis nigriventris is THE "upside-down catfish" while other Synodontis are usually called squeakers or synos (e.g. S. multipunctatus = "cuckoo squeaker" not "cuckoo upside-down catfish"). A quick Internet search seems to agree with this, including our beloved Practical Fishkeeping which states that S. nigriventris is the "true Upside-down catfish". In my opinion, most people who want to look up S. nigriventris would probably search for "upside-down catfish" rather than any other search terms, while people who want to look up for other Synodontis fishes would be much less likely to use that name. Just like the case of Paradise fish where people wanting to look up that article would expect to find Macropodus opercularis even though you can argue that there are other Macropodus fishes occationally using that name. So, considering the general readers, the name "upside-down catfish" would probably be best as the article title for that fish, with the mention of other common names in the introduction paragraph. Just my thought. --Melanochromis 03:27, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

This is a can of worms, which is why I changed it. Now, outside of fishkeeping, all Synodontis spp. are called "squeakers" That's their (English) name in Africa, for a start. However, the hobby always calls them upside down catfish, never squeakers. At least, never in the UK or US. The name "upside down catfish" is used in the article Synodontis as a synonym for the genus name and the family Mochokidae, which it most certainly is not. Only a few species are inverting, all the other swim normally. So I changed Upside-down catfish to Dwarf upside-down catfish so that there'd be clear blue water between the single species S. nigriventris and all the other species in the genus Synodontis. I'd be 100 times happier to rename the article to Synodontis nigriventris and simply have the Synodontis stating some species are known as "squeakers" or "upside down catfish". Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 15:12, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Coincidentally, I was at an aquarium shop today and saw three different species of Synodontis. And S. nigriventris was the only one labelled "upside down catfish". The other two are labelled by their Latin names. Isolated case or universial use I can't guarantee (who knows what it's called in Australia lol), but I think it does show that the fish is, to a very reasonable degree, known as "upside down catfish". I think, for the sake of the general public, it's most reasonable to go with the title "upside down catfish" for S. nigriventris as that's what the fish is known. --Melanochromis 21:52, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that not *all* "upside-down catfish" sold in the trade are S. nigriventris. Some aquarists (and retailers) think they are, but they aren't. At least four species I know of are traded under the name -- S. contractus, S. aterrimus, S. nigrita, and S. nigriventris. (I've bought an S. nigriventris and then watched in horror as it grew into a giant S. nigrita!) Others like S. pleurops may be accidentally traded as "upside down catfish" as well. There are also "sub-type" Upside-down catfish, like the Asian upside-down catfish. So making the terms "Upside-down catfish" and "Synodontis nigriventris" synonyms in Wikipedia is perpetuating a myth. Anyway, what I've done now is expand the Upside-down Catfish article, moved the science to Synodontis nigriventris, and made Dwarf Upside-down Catfish more specific in its scope. Naturally, I've added references! Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 10:43, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi Neale, the Upside-down catfish as a disambiguation page is a great job. I like it this way. Disambiguation pages like this should show in search engines (while simple redirects don't) and it helps to educate the general public. But why Dwarf upside-down catfish is now a seperate page? The Dwarf upside-down catfish article is not really a disambiguation page (as Upside-down catfish already does that job), it's still about S. nigriventris. And even more confusing, why the edit history is not transferred to Synodontis nigriventris. That's almost 4 years of editing gone! Do you want me to ask an admin to complete to history move? --Melanochromis 17:36, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, please make/ask for the history change. I'm happy to see the "dwarf" and regular Upside-down Catfish pages merged, so go ahead and do that. I admit, it's got to the point of being spaghetti code. But I think you appreciate what I was aiming for! Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 18:07, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

So, I have asked User:Ginkgo100, an admin who is also a WP:FISH member to complete the history move. See my request on her talk page here. At the moment, please do not edit or make changes to any of the related pages. We'll just wait for Ginkgo100 to finish the move first. --Melanochromis 20:14, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

The article and its talk page have been moved, and I think I got all the double redirects. --Ginkgo100^talk 01:57, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you Ginkgo! --Melanochromis 04:06, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Neolamprologus brichardi

Can someone expert on cichlids please check this article. My concern is on the talk page. In a nutshell, we have an apparent conflict between what happens in the aquarium and what happens in the wild, but no attempt to separate the two. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 12:10, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm no expert Neale, but I agree the article needs serious work. I agree there's confusion about aquarium behaviour and actual behaviour and it should be addressed. Some of the content is also simply wrong. I'll attempt to do some clean up myself over the next few days. There's a reasonable amount of information on the reproductive behaviour of this species in the wild published in studies - I'll try and work some into the article. Cheers, David. MidgleyDJ 12:19, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

According to my cichlid book they are found in small groups in nature and are territorial in the aquarium. However, the book also states that in the aquarium, the young usually do not leave the territory of their parents. They stay and actually help defending the territory and protecting the small ones, effectively forming a family clan. So the species is found in groups (or rather clans/families) but is still highly territorial. The only problem is: The book is in German. Is it ok to cite a German reference or do we have to find an English one? --Regani.de 19:09, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Provided you can translate it - any reference is fine Regani.de. In the wild, sources in the scientific literature demonstrate that breeding pairs (or trios) frequently recruit unrelated (rather than family) helpers. I'll post some references for this shortly. Cheers David. MidgleyDJ 19:27, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

My thing here is that in an aquarium, the juveniles cannot leave the parents' territory, which is not the case in the wild. It is possible that a behaviour they exhibit in captivity is something they do not exhibit in the wild. It is important that the biology section of a species entry be exclusively based on what they do in natural circumstances. Any aquarium behaviours *must* be explicitly stated to be such, and kept in the "In the aquarium" section. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 20:47, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

WP:TOL template

I'm working on a proposal to subsume all the WP:TOL project banners into a single one. Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life/Template union proposal and its talk page. Circeus 19:22, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Julian Sprung

It appears this person has written a number of books about marine aquariums. Is there someone at this project who can update his page any? It has been nominated for deletion, but I don't think it will be deleted. Still, if someone has the time to clean up and resource the article into a respectable stuff, it would be nice. KP Botany 21:10, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I've written aquarium books and magazine articles as well, and no-one has written a page about me. I'm not convinced merely writing about aquaristics is good enough to warrant an entry in Wikipedia. The article itself is not at all neutral -- use of phrases like "recognized expert", "popular", and "fellow marine aquarium expert" suggest an attempt to promote Mr. Sprung, and at least 50% of the article is advertising companies or products with which Mr. Sprung makes financial gain from. If the subject of the article was uncontentious, that wouldn't be a problem (after all, the articles on Tina Turner or Britney Spears presumably make extensive mention of their products as well). But in this instance, the subject is so debatably notable that the whole thing comes across as an advertisement. By all means, use Mr. Sprung's books as references to existing articles, but creating an article about him seems a bit overdone. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 21:30, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh, let's just debate his noteworthyness without debating the quality of the article--the latter gets Wikipedia into situations where Rock climbing is offered up for deletion. So, you don't think he's notable enough to merit an article on Wikipedia? (And, again, regardless of whether or not you merit one.) If an article is not neutral, it's neutrality is worked on or its lack is tagged, it is not deleted if the subject itself is noteworthy enough. So, what's the bottom dollar, if it were a well-written article, would the subject belong on Wikipedia? He has enough information about him on the Internet at least, that it seems the article won't be deleted. KP Botany 21:37, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Rotting nose disease is up for AfD

As the header says, this article has been nominated for deletion. It is about a disease of oscars that sounds similar to hole in the head disease, but I couldn't find anything to support its existence on the internet. An inquiry over at the science reference desk gave a possible solution to this: it could be someone's name for head and lateral line erosion disease. That same inquiry resulted in someone putting the article up for AfD, so I thought I would mention it here. In my own opinion, the article is currently helping no one, since it is unlikely anyone would search for it under that name, and the details are too vague to rename it to anything else. --Joelmills 02:16, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

This article is now deleted. I'm new, is there some way to archive this?Peregrinebee 15:40, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it is now deleted. However, I don't think talk pages or sections of talk pages generally aren't archived until they get too large. MiltonT 17:46, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Green spotted puffer

Anyone want to take a pass at this? Apart from the fast that this name gets applied to at least two different species, Tetraodon nigroviridis and Tetraodon fluviatilis, this article seems to be entirely about aquarium biology. While aquarists do sometimes keep it in a seawater aquarium, I have yet to read a single piece of scientific literature that reports on it being found in the sea -- and I've looked. Can anyone comment on this either way? Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 14:47, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree that we should edit out that part about being kept in saltwater as it is unreferenced and information that actually substantiates that is lacking. Also, according to FishBase, Tetraodon fluviatilis is known as the "green pufferfish", but then again I'm not so much into puffers and don't know much about their common names. MiltonT 16:06, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Adoptions

I thought I would start a subject for us users new to wikipedia and have signed up for adoption. Hopefully we can match up new users with interests in fishkeeping with editors with the same interests. I'll be the first! Peregrinebee 15:10, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Animals project proposal

I think it's both a pity and somewhat illogical that we have no animal WikiProject despite the fact that there are over 20 projects that are basically its daughters. There are also other projects that could emerge from it in the future, such as one on animal behavior. The project would provide a central place for people from all animal projects to talk, a central set of guidelines for articles on animals and zoology, and an assessment system for articles related to animals. If you are interested in creating such a project please visit Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of life#Animals project to discuss. Richard001 08:53, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

The following projects would come under the parentage of this project:

• WikiProject Amphibians and Reptiles
  • WikiProject Dinosaurs
  • WikiProject Pterosaurs
  • WikiProject Sea Monsters
• WikiProject Arthropods
  • WikiProject Lepidoptera
  • WikiProject Phasmatodea
  • WikiProject Spiders
• WikiProject Birds
• WikiProject Cephalopods
• WikiProject Fishes
  • WikiProject Aquarium Fishes
  • WikiProject Sharks
• WikiProject Gastropods
• WikiProject Mammals
  • WikiProject Monotremes and Marsupials
  • WikiProject Cetaceans
  • WikiProject Primates
  • WikiProject Cats
  • WikiProject Dogs
    • WikiProject dog breeds
  • WikiProject horse breeds
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Animal rights

Feature article candidate: Halfbeak

We already have Good Article status for this, but there's a whole bunch of mostly technical rather than content changes that need to be done for Feature status. Formatting references for example. You can see the discussion here. If anyone wants to help out, that would be much appreciated. Even if you can't make these changes, adding positive comments to the review would be appreciated. Thanks! Neale Neale Monks 10:19, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to massive amounts of work from MiltonT, this article is really looking good now. Please please please stop by, edit if you want, and then leave your thoughts on its FA Discussion pages. It's really only grammatical stuff people are commenting on, so the more people who read and tweak, the better. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 11:56, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

threadfin cichlid - thoughts?

I'd like peoples views on the idea that we move Threadfin cichlid to Petrochromis trewavasae and turn Threadfin cichlid into a common name disambiguation that links to P. trewavasae and Acarichthys heckelii (also known as threadfin cichlid or threatfin acara)? MidgleyDJ 23:14, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me, though I can't say I've heard Acarichthys heckelii commonly referred to by that name. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 11:57, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Tetraodon biocellatus

Hi, I updated this stub; would be great if people can check over and expand it some to make it a full article. Also, I had the article renamed to the scientific name, from 'Figure 8 puffer', based on the precedent established by a number of other puffer articles. The common name variants are now redirects. Out of interest, has the project ever discussed standards on this? The admin responding to my request noted that in botanical articles there was a move towards standardising with the scientific names. I don't mind working on a tasklist to do this for aquatic species if there's consensus to do that. What do people think? Coldmachine^Talk 16:26, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Elacatinus

Hi everyone... Just created Elacatinus (also a redirect from Neon Goby). I would appreciate it if some people would go check it out, make sure I didn't make any typos! It has been listed under the scope of both this wikiproject and Wikiproject Marine Life. Thanks, L'Aquatique ^talktome 23:58, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Requesting comments on merge

Requesting wider input on proposed merge of related articles cleaner fish, (with) cleaner shrimp and(/or) cleaner station. Richard001 10:07, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Proposed change to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna)

There is a current proposal to change an animal-related naming convention, which directly effects the the Manual of Style guideline, and the naming conventions policy. If you are interested, your input would be appreciated. Justin ^chat 06:32, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Redirects on "G. species" disambiguation pages

Please see this discussion so that we can come to a conclusion about redirects used on "G. species" disambiguation pages.

Thank you, Neelix (talk) 00:45, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Rename Siamese fighting fish -> Betta splendens

There is currently a conversation about the future name of Siamese fighting fish. Those interested please weight in at Talk:Siamese fighting fish#Requested move so this conversation can reach a consensus. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 05:28, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Howto issues

I recently got called on this issue, and wanted to see if there is a consensus on how to handle this.

Wikipedia has a standard to not include: "instructions, advice (legal, medical, or otherwise) or suggestions, or contain "how-to"s. This includes tutorials, walk-throughs, instruction manuals, video game guides, and recipes."

Most of the aquarium fish pages I have seen include just this sort of information. It tells you how to keep this particular fish, what temperature, tank mates, what to feed them and so on. From what I can tell, it is the policy of the Wikiproject Aquarium Fishes to include this information. Where do you draw the line? Clearly saying what temperatures the fish can tolerate doesn't cross the line, but what about information such as tetras do best when kept in groups? It seems to me wikipedia is best keeping this information, but if it is the policy to eventually delete all of it than I should be aware.

Perhaps the whole issue can be avoided by clever choice of wording. Instead of saying "angelfish are large, they therefore should be kept in aquariums of 180 gallons or larger" the wording could be altered to "because angelfish are so large they are typically housed in aquariums of 180 gallons or larger." This would leave the important information in tact but avoid words like "should" that give the impression wikipedia is telling you how to do something. It seems reasonable that a page on a fish species would describe how they are typically kept in captivity. Glmory (talk) 19:50, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Here is my personal opinion on it. The policy against tutorials etc. probably makes it a bad idea (ie, not encyclopedic) to have a page devoted to, for example, the step-by-step setup of a particular aquarium. But we do not appear to be doing that. The important part of your question has to do with giving legal advice, medical advice, etc. In my opinion, we do not have a problem there. To give legal, medical, etc. advice, one must, legally, be licensed to do so, but providing information about fishkeeping is not like that at all. Also, there is a difference between providing information, as we do here, and providing advice or personal instructions, as when someone asks what they should do with their tank. We do not individually answer those kinds of questions here. It's up to the reader what use he or she makes of our information, and we are not telling them what to do. That's my take. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:57, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Tryptofish. Basically, the articles generally provide facts about the fish in the context of an aquarium environment. They are not a "how to" guide as to how to keep the fish. Admittedly, there are (or at least were, I haven't checked recently) some articles that seem to read more like "how to" guides than they probably should (e.g., use language like "the fishkeepers should keep fish x at a temperature of 70 degrees" or "the fish should be kept in a group of at least 6") but that is more of a copy edit issue (the above statements should be rewritten as "fish x prefers a temperature of about 70 degrees" or "the fish does best in the company of a group of at least 6"). Rlendog (talk) 20:13, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

List of marine aquarium fish species

I made some fairly significant changes to List of marine aquarium fish species over the past few weeks. If anyone has suggestions as to what aspect of it I should work on next your input would be most welcome.

Also, if anyone knows a good way to compress the references section I would like to know that too, I am citing different pages of the same book dozens of times and would like to find a way to easily combine all references to that book into a much smaller space. Glmory (talk) 01:51, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your work on this. One idea I can offer for the references is, for those that are numbered consecutively, after the first one, just put "ibid., p. ###" for the subsequent ones. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:20, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

As I've grown more familiar with things here, I realize that my answer above was a flawed one. If you are still interested, a better answer is at WP:FN#Style recommendations, specifically the strategy using a separate list exemplified at Kepler and Tagore. Sorry if I gave you a bum steer earlier. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:26, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

WP:CITE is also invaluable here; if you are using general references then the section heading needs to be named Bibliography or Further Reading rather than References and the article may be at risk of being tagged with the {{nofootnotes}} template. It's better to go with inline citations, where possible, because these pick out specific pages (so the referencing can be more readily verified) and you can use the <ref> tag with an associated ID to duplicate the reference, rather than manually entering 'Ibid' for example. Coldmachine^Talk 22:28, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Redirect

The redirect from WikiProject Aquarium Fishes to Wikipedia:WikiProject Aquarium Fishes has been nominated for RFD. Stifle (talk) 21:31, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Seems reasonable to me. No other WikiProjects come up from the search box without WP: first. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:06, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

The Aquarium Wiki Encyclopaedia

I guess everyone knows the Aquarium Wiki Encyclopaedia and the grand work they've done on Aquarium fish and the hobby as a whole?

--Quatermass (talk) 21:32, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I do! I'm the editor who put the link to here today that I suspect you saw. I've also been trying to make sure there are links around here to your excellent site. If you know of places here at Wikipedia where you would like to add links to The Aquarium Wiki, please feel free to let me know. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:13, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Presumably you will be doing so in accordance with WP:ELNO and specifically #2, #4, and #12, bearing in mind also WP:COI, otherwise they're likely to be reverted as WP:SPAM quickly enough. Coldmachine^Talk 00:35, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh my goodness, I think we have a misunderstanding, so please let's discuss this calmly. In my experience, the site to which Quatermass refers is a high-quality wiki site maintained by editors who are specifically interested in aquarium fish. I've looked at WP:ELNO, and, unless there is something of which I'm unaware, there is no problem here. #2 is about factually misleading material; I am aware of no way that that would apply to that site, and I am shocked by the suggestion that it would. #4 is about using links for promotional purposes; as far as I can tell, this would instead be using links as legitimate sources of additional information, as often occurs quite appropriately in "see also" sections. #12 is about active wikis lacking sufficient historical stability and/or sufficient numbers of editors; perhaps there is a valid issue here, so please educate me if so, but it appears to me that the site in question is substantial enough to be appropriate in this regard. Please note that, before I ever became an editor here, this page has had a link to the Aquarium Wiki here, as a useful reference to refer to when researching articles as part of this project! You also suggest that there might be a conflict of interest. I assure you that there is not, at least for me, and I find the suggestion quite disturbing. So, what's going on here? I assume good faith, so maybe there was a misunderstanding, and I hope my explanations are helpful in clearing things up. I suppose that it is also possible that, predating my own membership here, there may have been some differences of opinion about having a separate wiki about aquaria versus pages about aquaria here, and I do realize that there can be issues about duplicated effort. If so, I would be happy to be educated about those issues, but my opinion is that, going forward, I have no interest in fighting about it, and I choose instead to help provide as much useful information as possible with helpful links where justified. If anyone wants a fight, please leave me out. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:36, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Not at all, and I'm also assuming good faith - it's why I placed a gentle reminder here, instead of waiting until you'd added links before templating your user talk page: no need to shoot the messenger. I believe most of us who are involved in the project here will be members of various forums, communities, wikis, whatnot, elsewhere. What we can't do is be complacent when it comes to the content policies and guidelines here on Wikipedia and those cover the addition of external links. I pointed out WP:ELNO, and if those guidelines are adhered to there won't be a problem. Just remember that your interpretation of an historically stable wiki with sufficient numbers of editors may well be different than the standards editors may expect here on Wikipedia. I also can't think why a link to a related article on Aquarium Wiki would be needed over here if editors were improving article content as they ought to be. Coldmachine^Talk 18:46, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying what you meant. I was alarmed by your earlier message, and it is helpful for you to explain things further. You say: "no need to shoot the messenger." Fair enough, but (especially as with much digital text communication, where one cannot detect the body language etc. of the sender), a lot of misunderstanding can arise when one reads intent into a comment, and that goes both ways. You felt like I was "shooting" you over a "gentle reminder." I, on the other hand, thought you were "shooting" me with an implied threat that I had a conflict of interest and was promoting blatantly false information, and I thought that I was just explaining myself in my last reply. So it is good to clarify things, and I hope you, in turn, can see where I was coming from. Your gentle reminder sounded, to me, less gentle than what I now understand you intended. Now, that said, I still have concerns from your more recent message. I hope that your going to the effort of referring to templating my user talk page was also meant as a gentle reminder of how processes work, but please understand that, on face-value reading, it comes across as a possible threat. And all because I made what I thought was a friendly, helpful, constructive comment to another editor (Quatermass)! When you say that you "can't think why a link to a related article on Aquarium Wiki would be needed over here if editors were improving article content as they ought to be", that makes me suspect that I was right about there being some kind of past disagreement over duplication of effort at that other site. And what you say about standards, why so indirect? If you have concerns about the editing quality at the other wiki, do please explain them specifically. If I am wrong about the quality of the other site, you would be doing me a favor to educate me, and I do have an open mind. As is, I'm still not sure what to really make of your comments. As I said, I thought I was just making friendly, constructive edits, and never expected a reaction like this. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:17, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

No reply yet, but I hope we have reached a friendly understanding going forward. Here is what I take to be the take-home message of the other editor's comments to me: "Thank you for your work on this project. Please note that The Aquarium Wiki, as an active wiki, should generally not be cited as a reference to support verifiable material in articles here. On the other hand, links in the "see also" sections of pages can be useful, so long as they are directly relevant and not indiscriminately numerous. If they are too numerous, they may be deleted by other editors, so it would be helpful to exercise discretion about adding them in the first place. By the way, editors who work at the other site are welcome and encouraged to improve articles here as well." That's what I understand, and if others agree, then there won't be a problem. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:40, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi there, no, you misunderstand. I said nothing of your wiki as a reliable source for which the case is more clear cut that we wouldn't be citing it at all; the discussion is in the context of WP:ELNO. It's not about duplication either: I've no knowledge of any past disagreements (or otherwise) on that matter; I'm simply reminding you about WP:ELNO and pointing out that according to this page your wiki wouldn't typically qualify as one with a "substantial history of stability and a substantial number of editors" so you may need to consider that while promoting the site in lists of External Links across articles in the mainspace. Anyway, no need to belabour the point: let's just get on with editing. Coldmachine^Talk 19:55, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks, that's an improvement over WP:ELNO #2 and #4, WP:COI, WP:SPAM, editors improving pages here "as they ought to be," and templating my talk page. And it's not "my" wiki, and I thought that I was just getting on with editing when you entered this talk. Now, I can look forward to just getting on with editing. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:02, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Please assume good faith here; I'm trying to help by highlighting some of the possible pitfalls you might face based on the initial posts you made here about promoting the Aquarium Wiki via external links. These are all just policy guidelines to assist. I'm sorry you've misunderstood my attempt to help as being something other than that. Coldmachine^Talk 22:18, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for that. I think we just had a series of misunderstandings, but both want the best for this site. I'm happy to move on now, very satisfied, and I sincerely hope that you are too. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:14, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I just wanted to chime in here... I and Quatermass founded the site a few years ago. It has taken a while to become the quality it is but I do believe it has reached a good and mature point. A while back we were granted an interwiki link AquariumWiki:Main_Page and I have encouraged my editors to only link from Wikipedia articles which are complete. I have been adding links from Wikipedia to The Aquarium Wiki for a while now and I haven't been messages regarding spam issues. We have also been challenged to join the Wikipedia aquarium fishes project before, however alot of our content is not up to wikipedia's standards... namely we do cite original research, user observations, and vague theories for caring for fish. Long story short... wikipedia simply will not allow all the information required to properly care for many fish species. Take care --Arjes (talk) 22:51, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks very much for that. It helps a lot for me to better understand, and I certainly appreciate the friendly, level-headed feedback. Actually, I first became aware of the idea of linking from talk with you at Aquarium. As I've been looking more into it, I now realize that you have already been making the kinds of links I was thinking of (and the world has not come to an end!), so I'm going to back away from all of that for now. I think there are good reasons here at WP for not giving how-to advice, but I can see the value of a separate wiki where that kind of advice is available to fish hobbyists. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:20, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Feedback requested: reinvigorating this project

In the immediately preceding talk section, about the Aquarium Wiki, one other editor discussed with me the possible pitfalls associated with linking to that other site from here. In my limited observation (but I could be wrong!), that other site seems like a good quality source, and some judicious, limited, links from WP aquarium fish pages to there (and from there back to here!) could be useful to readers of WP. But I have better things to do with my time if I'm just going to be reverted. I'd like to ask OTHER editors who are interested in aquarium fish what they think about that, so please say here whatever you think. Also, more broadly, it seems to me like a lot of editors who started this particular wikiproject are no longer actively editing. Are there any ideas about reinvigorating this project? Thanks! --Tryptofish (talk) 14:36, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi there; although I seem to have been marginalised or excluded from this call for feedback based on our earlier exchange on the same issue, it would seem that essentially you're calling for a consensus here on the issue, but again I'd point out this page for your information and particularly the opening paragraph which reads that: "Consensus between a small number of editors can never override the community consensus that is presented in Wikipedia's policies and guidelines; instead, consensus is the main tool for enforcing these standards. The focus of every dispute should be determining how best to comply with the relevant policies and guidelines. Editors have reached consensus when they agree that they have appropriately applied Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, not when they personally like the outcome." Whether or not editors here reach a consensus that linking to Aquarium Wiki is a 'good thing' or a 'bad thing', the community's consensus is overriding of that and therefore the policies/guidelines take precedence. Coldmachine^Talk 15:18, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! What do OTHER editors think? --Tryptofish (talk) 15:34, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

In light of the information from Arjes in the section just above, I'm going to back away from my idea of Aquarium Wiki links for now. (My, what fun this has been for me!) But if anyone is aware of possible useful links, it would be very good to start by discussing them here, and I remain happy to help. That said, please let me re-frame my feedback request to focus mainly on the second point I raised: reinvigorating the wikiproject here. Any ideas? --Tryptofish (talk) 23:27, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

First we should start off by removing all the members whose pages no longer exist. I've noticed a few of them showing up as red links. Second start an active campaign to recruit more people into the project. Check pages that are about aquarium fishes find who wrote it, and ask them to join up. Thats all I've got for now. Maybe Spam everyone on the wikiproject fishes member list? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Drew R. Smith (talk • contribs) 07:36, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. My inclination is to steer clear of "spam," in the sense of mass messages, and we should assume that active list members watch the page. But individual messages to page authors and contributors are a good idea. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:53, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

P.S.: I looked at the listed members with red links, and all but one have recent user contributions (likewise for the first couple of members on the list), so they are active editors and should not be deleted without their permission. (Some editors just choose not to put content on their user pages, as is their prerogative.) --Tryptofish (talk) 20:08, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Unless they posted last night, the last post for the top three members was at the beginning of this month. Its already the 26th. An entire month has gone by without thm posting. How long do they have to not post to be considered "inactive"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Drew R. Smith (talk • contribs) 21:05, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Whoa, please slow down! Way more than a month. Editors can wikibreak for more than a month for any number of reasons. The idea here is to be inclusive. (By the way, please remember to sign your posts.) --Tryptofish (talk) 23:24, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Just by way of perspective, administrators, who are expected to be way more active than the average editor, are considered inactive after two months. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:40, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I had a note from Drew on my talk page - persoanlly I wouldn't bother with a newsletter. Alot of work and unclear who will read it (3 or 4 people?). I see someone has linked at the Community Portal page, which is a good idea. Other options are a Collaboration. These can be good at times to produce content. I'd aim to get new articles at T:TDYK for use on the main page. That is new or five-fold expanded articles in less than five days. This will get some fish on the Main Page, and folks will notice that. There might be some better candidates for GA than Violet Goby too. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:00, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I think that Casliber has made some excellent suggestions. Thank you very much for that. In particular, it might be a very good idea to start using this talk to discuss and identify candidate pages for GA and DYK. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:12, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I confess I know very little about fish and aquariums. I had a look at a couple of fish I know - Kissing gourami and Siamese fighting fish and they need quite a bit of work balancing and striaghtening out content. Best for DYK is to look up some fish you know about and can source information quickly which either have no article or are a stub of less than 150 words or so or prose (easy to expand five times :)). Even list some here and then buff them as a group. I can help set up a collaboration for you guys too. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:21, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

• Ocean sunfish is an example of a fishy featured article. Have a loo and in general it is a good format tomorrow (though obviously the last section will be a captivity or aquaculture and quite detailed. This is an okay template to look at. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:11, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

One, the portal was my doing. Two, I got a fish article on the main page today (well yesterday, its after midnight now) about my violet goby as a DYK. So, anybody got ideas for an article we can create/ expand for another fish DYK? I'd love to help with that collaboration. And, on a compeletely unrelated note: OMG I think my pregnant guppy is having her babies tonight!!! (I know the term is fry, but I'm a human, so they're babies) The father was a Golden Swordtail though, so I don't know if she will be ok. I was freaking out when she went past 35 days, cuz they're only supposed to be pregnant for 24-30. So I looked it up for swordtails, and it was around 45 days. sure enough about 40 days after we noticed, she's acting like she's gonna drop em any minute now!D^rew S^mith 12:00, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Need Peer Review Please.

I need a peer review of my new article Gobioides Broussonneti. This is my first article and any advice or criticism would be greatly appreciated.Drew R. Smith (talk) 07:31, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Will do (at the page). --Tryptofish (talk) 15:50, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Done. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:27, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Bred in captivity/endangered or threatened status

It would be nice if we could mark articles (in the infobox?) with whether the fish is more often captured live or bred in captivity. And whether it's in anyway endangered or threatened in the wild.

In most cases aquarium fish are bred in captivity. Only the fish that can't be bred in captivity, aren't. Likewise, conservation is difficut to determine, and in most countries you can't keep endangered or threatened species as pets, so the point is moot.^DrewSmith 22:00, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Not that I'm volunteering to change the infobox, but there are some caveats about that. Some species, such as cardinal tetras, are being caught in the wild as an economically-integrated conservation measure, even though they can be captive-bred; others, such as red-tailed black "sharks," are essentially extinct in the wild, but are captive-farmed. And for a lot of saltwater species, those being sold are a mix, so it's hard to generalize, but it's better to get tank-raised. Thus, I think there could end up being POV issues in reducing a description of commercially-sold species to an infobox category about how they are usually raised. But on the other hand, it would be a good idea to add information about that, if sourced, to article text. And, there are official listings of endangered and threatened species, so it might also be a good idea to incorporate that into infoboxes. If we do that, it might be better to reach out to the Fishes WikiProject first. Do other animal groups indicate endangered status in their infoboxes? (Hey, cool signature, Drew!) --Tryptofish (talk) 22:30, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

(just to start, im about to play a video game, and have my gaming keyboard hooked up, so if my typing sux, thats why) Like I said before, most, if not all countries ban the keeping of endangered species as pets. As far as I know, the red-tailed black shark isnt even considered endangered because they have sufficient numbers in captivity to keep them off the endangered list. I have looked through every book I own, and none of them even mention conservation status which tells me it's just isn't an issue. I do agree, an infobox on captive or wild brred may be a good idea. In my earlier post I did not even think about the saltwater fish. (at least here in hawaii) Saltwater fish are almost always caught in the wild. Even the ones that aren't found here. We've got a harbor goby at the petshop down the road that was caught by a local guy on his trip to New England (supposedly). (jesus, can't even find the tilde key on this keyboard.)^DrewSmith 01:08, 3 May 2009 (UTC)P.S. the sig is a work in progress. Thanx for noticing.^DrewSmith 01:14, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Aquarium Guide?

Should each article include a guide about husbandry of the fish? WP:NOT a guidebook. mynameinc 15:54, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Good question, but in a sense, you answered it yourself when you referred to WP:NOT. The answer is that, per WP policy, no, we cannot write how-to information about fish care. The reasoning is that, as an encyclopedia, we don't give medical or legal advice, print food recipes, or write how-to information about hobbies. I'm not saying I agree with it personally as it applies here, but that's the way it is. Please see the discussion about it in this talk, above, including the correct way to word articles so as to stay within policy. This is the main reason that a separate wiki was formed for the express purpose of writing about husbandry, but see here how some WP editors have reacted to that! --Tryptofish (talk) 17:33, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. (No pun intended) mynameinc 18:13, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

In my articles, I try to phrase the breeding section as un-guidbook-like as I can. In my Violet Goby article the breeding routine was so complicated that I couldn't help making it sound like an instruction manual, but no one has chellenged it yet, so I guess [[WP:IAR] would apply here.D^rew S^mith 20:07, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

(Please note that subsequent edits to that article decreased the how-to aspects. Please check its edit history. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:50, 4 May 2009 (UTC))

Well thats good. One thing I have noticed though, even real encyclopedias have small how-to style sections for plants or animals that can be kept or bred. I think it would be almost irresponsible to leave something out because you don't know how to make it sound less like a how to guide. Ex. Many fish do great in small tanks until they get larger, in which case they need to be moved to a bigger tank. But we can't really put that in the article because it sounds like a how-to. So someone reads the article about this fish, buys one, and the fish dies a stunted painful death because we didn't put critical information in the article. I think we should include small how-to sections, but try to phrase it in a more encyclopedic way. If anyone challenges it point out the above example and invoke WP:IAR. Just my two cents.D^rew S^mith 00:22, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I think we all agree that wording it carefully is the way to go. Here's how-to (oh no!). Using Drew's example: "The fast-growing bigfish has been kept by some hobbyists in small aquarium tanks, but is known to reach a full size of 15 inches in a tank of 200 gallons or larger.(ref)" As for invoking IAR, or talking about "real encyclopedias," you're on your own! --Tryptofish (talk) 01:02, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

LOL. But seriously, what about fish that have some pretty specific care intructions that can't be properly translated into a non how to format?D^rew S^mith 02:12, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Likely to be reverted. That's just the way it is. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:54, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Thats just plain wrong. I don't want fish to die because I'm not allowed to tell someone how to take care of their fish.D^rew S^mith 01:42, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Policy can change. Why not pursue this on the WP:NOT talk page and try to raise a consensus for altering the current rule? Perhaps if you made a good enough case for WP:AQF being a special case then the community might adjust the way things are done. To be fair, though, I seriously doubt conscientious aquarists use Wikipedia as their primary source of information...there are hobbyist magazines and websites out there that do this job well enough already and they existed long before. Also, Tryptofish, please stop baiting me; it won't work - I'm not one of the fish you're writing about over at the Aquarium Wiki. That previous discussion concerned friendly advice over Wikipedia's external link guidelines which you were casually ignoring and I've no particular opinion on your wiki side project. Coldmachine^Talk 07:21, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

(re-indent)Good idea. I'll give it a shot. Maybe you guys could head over there and help me support the change? Also, coldmachine. As a neutral observer it really doesnt appear to me that trypto was baiting you. What did he say, in particular that you thought was baiting? It looked to me like you both slightly misunderstood the others intent, and it lead to one person feeling harassed and the other baited.D^rew S^mith 07:29, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

This edit, which dug up a discussion over 4 months old for no apparent reason. Time to move on perhaps? Coldmachine^Talk 09:11, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I see. the remark about "how some editors reacted to that", am I right? I don't think he was baiting you, merely making a good natured joke towards another editor. I agree though, it's time to leave it alone, both of you. (jeez, I sound like my mom!)Drew Smith What I've done 10:19, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Ok guys, I've talked it over with some people at WP:NOT, and the general consensus was to just do it. They also said, that there are lots of other examples, such as someone dying because of lack of information in a medical article. Obviously there hasn't been any great change in policy, but I'm still hoping.Drew Smith What I've done 10:30, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Good stuff raising it over on WP:NOT. I've read the discussion and there are some really valuable things coming out of it. I don't agree that consensus has already been achieved, in the space of one day, not by any stretch of the imagination. I'd hold off on making mass or radical changes to the breadth of articles affected by this discussion just for now, until there's something more tangible than 5 editors offering their thoughts on what is quite a significant policy issue. No need to be hasty. I personally agree with what two editors think over the use of reliable sources as a means for justifying the inclusion of 'how-to' information where it is deemed absolutely impossible to exclude. That is, if we do decide to include 'how-to' information - e.g. "this fish needs a large tank" - then we'd better be sourcing it to a reliable third-party source where that's been written. Coldmachine^Talk 13:25, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Drew, thank you very much for raising the discussion at WP:NOT, as well as for your very sensible comments about that other thing. I too have read the talk so far at NOT, and I agree with Coldmachine that the comments there are very helpful, that we should take to heart the advice about sourcing, and that we should take it slow until there has been more discussion of the policy.

I'll also point out, by way of devil's advocacy, that there is some good reasoning behind existing policy, as in the following scenario. A hobbyist reads some how-to in one of our fish articles, applies it (or thinks that they applied it), and then something goes wrong and the fish dies, and the reader gets angry at us. (Even worse if you imagine it as human medical or legal advice.) Of course, I admit that's a far-fetched example, but it could happen sooner or later nonetheless. Past editors seem to have felt that it's wise to avoid giving the impression of giving advice in the first place, and instead to take the posture of giving information. I think the good news is that it's almost always possible to frame advice as information, as in the ways of wording it discussed repeatedly in this talk above.

I think that providing the appropriate how-to information, as information, and sourcing it to a reliable outside source, works very well, and now that editors who are interested in policy have been made aware of the specific concerns we have here, there is less likelihood of anyone nitpicking with us, so that's all good. (What I mean is give the husbandry advice, but make it sound encyclopedic so it doesn't sound like advice. That's really very easy to do, and is unlikely now to lead to objections or reversions.) --Tryptofish (talk) 19:14, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Offer: If anyone is having trouble writing care information on a fish page, in a way that stays in policy, please just let me know. I'm comfortable with how to do it, and I'm happy to help. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:34, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Active, Inactive, and Former member lists

Mynameinc recently added the Active, Inactive, and Former member lists to the page. I think this is a good idea, but we need to come up with some guidlines describing what constitutes as inactive or former member. Particularly does it require lack of editing on fish articles, or lack of editing on wikipedia in general. And how long? How long can an editor not contribute before (s)he becomes inacive?D^rew S^mith 00:26, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Here's my 2 cents:

1. I'm not convinced that identifying editors as "former" accomplishes anything good, or that listing former editors as "active" does any harm. But if I'm overlooking anything, please correct me.
2. Having a category for editors to self-identify as "inactive" might be a good thing for editors who feel like "I want to be part of this project, but I'm so busy with other editing that I don't have time to do much here." And I think it's fine to allow editors to self-identify as "inactive" or "former," although former editors generally won't do so.
3. It will be a hassle for whoever wants to do it (not me!), but, before moving anyone now on the list out of the "active" category, you really should leave a message on their user talk page, saying they'll be moved after something like one week if they don't reply that they want to stay. (Editors who no longer edit probably won't see the message, but that's OK.) It would be impolite not to give notice.
4. I would steer clear of trying to distinguish AQF edits from edits in general when determining activity. Someone who is editing currently is editing currently, regardless of subject matter, and may choose to come back to fish articles at any time.
5. There's no hard and fast rule for how long before being inactive, but I suppose it is reasonable to figure that an editor who has made no edits of any sort for one year is no longer actively editing. (Lots of active editors take a month or two off, so it better be a lot longer than that.)

--Tryptofish (talk) 01:20, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree about point #1. The former part may want to be removed, and "Former" editors should be listed under inactive. I'll see what I can do about messaging the others. Maybe we can split up the current members list and have several of us message people. Good point on steering clear of AQF edits vs. edits in general. Just to clarify the point of that was "This project is about fish. If their last post about a fish related article was 3 years ago, shouldn't they be considered inactive in the project?". But yes, I agree with your rationale. And I guess it is agreed that about a year of no edits is considered inactive?(for the purpose of our project, not wikipedia in general)D^rew S^mith 02:09, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Good, I agree with you that merging "former" into "inactive" would be a good approach. Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:59, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I concur. mynameinc 22:03, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Done. Now that that's out of the way, what is the official consensus on how long before someone is moved to inactive?D^rew S^mith 01:12, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Tryptofish that a year sounds adequate. Coldmachine^Talk 07:23, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I'm going to make the changes then. Everyone who hasn't contributed at all in the past 365 days will be moved to the inactive list.D^rew S^mith 07:30, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Template

We could (probably) make a template for the new fish articles. Just fill in all the fields and substitute the template, then, after saving, the user could add any additional information. mynameinc 20:07, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I've got my own template, but it needs some work, and maybe a total re-vamp, as it tends to divide up the information into a bunch of different headings with small amounts of text. You can check it out here.Drew Smith What I've done 21:49, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Pop Quiz

DYK ...that the article on the common seahorse, or Hippocampus kuda is a stub? I couldn't believe it! I'm going to start working on it now, anyone up for a collaboration?Drew Smith What I've done 09:07, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Pics!

I took a trip to the waikiki aquarium today, and got some amazing pics (yes, I live in hawaii). Check them out on my Userpage and tell me what you think!Drew Smith What I've done 11:38, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Adding pictures: need help

I can help with providing photos (macros, close-ups etc). I have just uploaded to Wikimedia Commons this front-view capture of a black moor (fancy goldfish) and perhaps will add a few more capture of details such as an oranda's wen, and the like. I'll check the articles on Wikipedia to see if there are more specific details/views that are not shown yet but may be useful. I'm pretty new to Wikipedia, though, and I am not sure how to submit pictures I have uploaded to Wikimedia Commons for consideration in a Wikipedia article. How do I do that? Any help is appreciated. Thanks. ﻯναოթ€ռ (talk) 13:02, 11 August 2009 (UTC)