The Aquarium Fishes WikiProject is planning to set up The Aquarium Fishes Portal in the near future. At this moment, please use The Fish Portal which has many interesting features and useful links. The fish portal shotcut is P:FISH
Members
Please do not hesitate to join Aquarium Fishes WikiProject. Just add your name to the list below. It's ok if you're new to the aquarium fishes. Everyone was a newbie once !! And it's ok too if you are new to Wikipedia. We all can help guide you with article writing/editing.
Identify articles, lists, and categories that are related to fishkeeping and aquarium fishes. There are at least 24,600 known species of fishes, but a small proportion of these are commonly kept aquarium fishes. When you do find them, please place {{Template:WikiProject aquarium fishes}} in the talk page of those article. In doing this, you are not only directing our members to those articles, but also directing potential members from those articles to us !! The template you posted will appear like this:
The WikiProject banner below should be moved to this page's talk page. If this is a demonstration of the template, please set the parameter |category=no to prevent this page being miscategorised.
This page is within the scope of WikiProject Aquarium Fishes, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Aquarium Fish articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Aquarium FishesWikipedia:WikiProject Aquarium FishesTemplate:WikiProject Aquarium FishesAquarium Fishes
This page does not require a rating on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
Categorize the articles
Categorize the articles taxonomically. It will make it easier for editors to find a particular fish. Here's an excerpt of the guideline from WikiProject Fishes:
Wikipedia categories should be created for well-known families, using the plural of
the common name of the family ([[Category:Sunfishes]] or [[Category:Cyprinids]]),
and for orders, using the common name (e.g., [[Category:Catfishes]]) or the scientific
epithet (e.g., [[Category:Cyprinodontiformes]]). For very small families (e.g., the
[[pygmy sunfish]]es), only the order category may be used, but usage must be consistent
among members of a family.
Note that some of the category examples in the excerpt are no longer used. You can see the more up-to-date list of taxonomical categories here.
For articles that is not taxonomical (articles that are not about a particular species, genus, family, or group of fish) you might want to put those articles in one of these categories:
Stubs are very short articles. Most fish articles, unfortunately, are still stubs at this point. They need to be marked up with the appropriate stub template at the bottom of the article. This will identify articles that need to be expanded. Currently there are five stub templates for you to use:
Again, there are at least 24,600 known species of fishes. We can't possibly put every fish in the list. Don't put a fish in the list just because it can fit a tank. Focus on more well-known fishes that are available in the aquarium trade.
Add pictures of aquarium fishes. The articles in general are seriously in needs of good pictures. Use Wikimedia common. Find an appropriate taxonimical category there then add the fish picture with caption that identifies the common name and scientific name. You might want to to start at the category Actinopterygii or ray-finned fish (see link in the box). Sometimes, you will find that you have the picture, but you don't know what exactly the fish is or cannot find the appropriate category. Then you can post it in the discussion section of this page, other members can help you identify the fish.
Keep in mind that Wikipedia is very strict about copyright and/or the license. Your own pictures are the best. If the picture is from a public domain or is a U.S. government work, it's also useable. When uploading, declare where the picture is from, and/or copyright status and/or the license.
Identify pictures
Identify pictures when requested. Or just browse wikimedia common for unidentified, wrongly-identified or uncategorized images. Give common name and scientific name, and place the picture in the appropriate category. You can also help putting up pictures in the articles too. This Actinopterygii article has a helpful taxonomical list that can be a good tool.
What you can do - Writing/Editing
Also see the format guidelines section below
Create articles
Create articles. You can create an article about any fish but the more well-known aquarium fishes should be given prority over the rare ones. Before creating, make sure the article doesn't already exist under a different name (another common name, scientific name, or included in the genus article, etc.). You can also request other members to create an article about a particular fish or topic.
Expand
Expand current existing articles, especially the stubs. You can find stubs by looking into associated categories as shown in the table above.
Copyedit
Copyedit articles that are badly written. Fix grammer, convert to "wikipedia" style of writing, and reformat according the guidelines provided in the format guidelines section.
Collaborate
Collaborate on the designated article of the week/month. The Aquarium Fishes WikiProject will ask all members to collaborate on expanding and polishing one particular article at a time. This is to brainstorm and make the best out of our combined strengths and ability. You are encouraged to suggest an article for the next collaboration in the discussion section. The suggestion that gets most supports from the members will become the collabaration of the next month.
What you can do - Assessment
At the current moment, the Aquarium Fishes WikiProject does not have any assessment activities. If interested, you may draft and propose this section.
Fish articles have a specific format to follow. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Fishes for general guidelines on writing about a fish (species, genus, family, etc.). We provide additional guidelines specifically for the aquarium care of fish
All fish articles begin with a taxobox. On the left is an example of a species taxobox for ocellaris clownfish. You can easily modify this to another fish. The taxonomy information is provided by fishbase. See more information about references in the references section below.
Taxobox asides, ideally an aquarium fish article should be organized in the following format.
Introduction paragraph (mention of trade names, alternate names, etc.)
Range or geographic distribution
Physical description, including sexing, size, weight, and age
Habitat, diet, and related information
Aquarium care (this part is still a draft, needs to be expanded somehow)
Popularity, hardiness, availability, general introduction
Behavior in captivity, aggressiveness
Tank set-up, tankmates, temperature, pH, water requirements
Feeding
Breeding, more details on sexing
Diseases and treatments
Varieties, breeds, colorations (if different breeds have significantly different behaviors or require different care, you may want to move this topic up)
Mentions of related species, how they are different or similar
Other aquarium care information
Other importance to humans (game fish, fishing, etc.)
Conservation status or invasive species status
Other noteworthy information
Trivia
References
Gallery
Many of the current aquarium fish articles already follow this format to some degrees. Others have a messy format and need a serious revision.
Here are some examples of the better organized articles:
Family vs. genus vs. species vs. breeds vs. informal groups
Family articles tend to have very broad contents. Aquarium care shouldn't go much in details here. Usually, it's good enough to have a medium-sized section that mentions members of the family that are popular aquarium fishes and some brief generalization of the fishes in aquarium.
Genus articles are usually short and should have generalized aquarium care of the fishes in that genus. Sometimes it can go in much details, and in situations that the genus has only one or very few similar species, the genus article may replace species articles completely. In such cases, aquarium care section should have as much details as possible as if it's a species article. Also mention the differences/similarities among species and if the hybridization across species is possible.
Species articles are usually the prime source of aquarium care information. Go into the most details here. Pictures are important and should have more than one.
Breed articles, at the present, exist only for goldfish. Most other fish breeds are not really qualified as seperate articles. The "gold severum" can be easily included in the severum article, just as the oscar article can mention the long-finned stain.
Informal group articles. Sometimes, aquarists group fishes differently from taxonomists do. This results in "informal group" articles. They are very varied and tend to be unorganized. As an attempt to organize them, the informal group articles are listed here (if you know other articles, please add them here):
References is one of the major weaknesses of many aquarium fish articles. Wikipedia is obsessive with references and citations. Articles will never receive Good Article or Featured article status if they don't have a lot of good references. There are two kinds of references we should know:
Taxonomy References
Fishbase is THE source for fish taxonomy in wikipedia. Please use and cite it religiously. The following templates are developed by WikiProject Fishes and are easy to place in references section of the article.
For a FishBase entry on an order, use:
{{FishBase order | order = Bariformes | year = YYYY | month = Month}}
For a FishBase entry on a family, use:
{{FishBase family | family = Baridae | year = YYYY | month = Month}}
For a FishBase entry on a genus, use:
{{FishBase genus | genus = Barus | year = YYYY | month = Month}}
For most FishBase entries on species, use:
{{FishBase species | genus = Barus | species = foous | year = YYYY | month = Month}}
For most FishBase entries on subspecies, use:
{{FishBase subspecies | genus = Barus | species = foous | subspecies = subfoous | year = YYYY | month = Month}}
For FishBase entries that are problematic for the above templates, get the numeric ID from their URL and use:
{{FishBase species alt | ID = ???? | taxon = Barus foous foous | year = YYYY | month = Month}}
For all FishBase templates, year and month refer to the FishBase revision consulted, not the date on which you consulted FishBase; the revision can be found from the FishBase home page.
ITIS (the Integrated Taxonomic Information System) is another source for taxonomy. In the references section, use this WikiProject Fishes template:
{{ITIS | ID = ????? | taxon = Barus foous | year = YYYY | date = DD Month}}
For the ITIS template, year and date refer to the date on which ITIS was consulted. Date can be in either U.S. or international format, as it will be wikified.
So far we haven't had an utimate source for aquarium care. There are books and magazine articles that can be cited as well as other online sources. However, please remember that commercial websites are usually NOT appropriate. The citations or external links to commercial websites will be deleted quickly and the article will end up with no sources at all. If you know any excellent and citable non-commercial sources, you may add it in the following list so that we all can use it as references. If you find that any website listed here is commerical or not citable, please remove it from the list.
Aquarticles.com - "An international collection of articles about fish and aquariums, available for free use in aquarium club newsletters and non- commercial web sites."
