Five steps, every record
Named sources, and only named sources
Every field starts from published care sources we are willing to name where you can see them. There are fifty three in use today, counted from the records rather than from this sentence. Four carry most of the weight: Seriously Fish, Aquarium Co-Op, Shrimp Science and Wikipedia.
The rest were added one record at a time as a question came up that the first four did not answer: A-Z Animals, AlgaeBarn, API Fishcare, Aquariadise, Bantam, aqua-fish, Aqueon, Aquarium Breeder, Aquarium Care Basics, Aquarium Genius, Aquarium Source, Aquarium Science, Aquarium Store Depot, Aquarium Plants Factory, Aquatic Arts, Advanced Aquarium Concepts, Awesome Axolotls, Buce Plant, Build Your Aquarium, Chicago Exotics Animal Hospital, Fish Laboratory, FishioHub, FishLab, Fishkeeping World, Flip Aquatics, FrogPets, the Florida Museum of Natural History, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the University of Utah, Glass Grown Aquatics, LiveAquaria, Modest Fish, PetMD, PetSmart, Pet Zone, PetVet Care Centers, Pond Informer, Puffer Fish Enthusiasts Worldwide, Shrimpy Business, Splashy Fish, Tankarium, Tankora, The Goldfish Tank, Tree of Life Exotic Pet Medical Center, Tropical Fish Hobbyist, Tropical Food Garden, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, VIVO Pets, Water Critters and WebMD.
Three of them are not care sources at all: the discus record cites a 2016 paper in PLoS One, by Satoh, Tanaka and Kohda, for a finding about facial recognition that no care sheet reports, the guppy record cites a 2017 paper in Ecology and Evolution, by Warbanski and colleagues, for the count of countries this species has been introduced to and what it did to the native fish there, and the axolotl record cites a veterinary practice for figures the hobby sources give differently. If a record cites one source only, it says so on the record.
Field by field, not paragraph by paragraph
Minimum tank, temperature, pH, hardness, adult size, diet, water column, lifespan, growth rate. That is nine fields on an animal record, and we transcribe fields, we do not summarize articles, which is why two records are comparable and why a missing field is obvious. A plant record carries nine of its own instead, because will it grow in my tank is a different question from does it fit: light, CO2, placement, substrate, growth rate, propagation, temperature, pH and eaten by. Only three of the eighteen are shared, and the records index prints the two grids separately for that reason.
Disagreements printed, not resolved quietly
The betta record carries one source saying never keep it in a community tank and another listing five tank mates. Both are on the page with what we do about it, because the disagreement is the actual state of the knowledge. All 48 of our records carry a block like it.
Blanks published as blanks
A field with no verified figure stays empty and says not recorded. Across the site that is 405 of 432 fields filled and 27 left blank, and every one of those blanks carries a note naming the sources that were read for it and what they said instead. Twelve of those notes were rewritten in a single pass, because eight of them stored nothing at all and four pointed at the row above them, and reading the sources properly closed four of the blanks outright.
Dated, and corrected in public
Each record carries the month it was checked. When a figure changes we change it on the record and say what changed, rather than editing silently and hoping nobody kept a screenshot. The changes made since publication are listed further down this page.
Which sources we use
A source is either good enough to name on the page or not good enough to use. There is no middle tier where something informs a record quietly.
| Source | Used for | Why | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seriously Fish | Parameters, size, biotope, behavior | States ranges field by field and is explicit about what it does not know. Fish only: it does not cover invertebrates. | In use |
| Aquarium Co-Op | Practical minimums, group sizes, tank mates, feeding | Keeper facing figures from a shop that publishes its reasoning, and it sells nothing on our pages. | In use |
| Shrimp Science | Invertebrate parameters, hardness, TDS | Publishes GH, KH and TDS ranges for shrimp, which the fish sources do not state at all. | In use |
| Wikipedia | Taxonomy, synonyms, maturity, distribution | Used where it cites primary literature and where the question is what an animal is called rather than how to keep it. | In use |
| Species forums | — | Where most circulating figures come from, and almost never with a source. We read them for questions, never for numbers. | Not used |
| Retailer product pages | — | The minimum tank on a product page is the tank the product fits, not the tank the animal needs. | Not used |
| Other care databases | — | Copying a database copies its errors, including the ones it copied. If a figure exists only in aggregators, it stays a blank here. | Not used |
The fish only line on the first row is not a criticism, it is the most expensive thing we have learned. Our cherry shrimp record sat with six blank fields because we were checking it against sources that do not publish invertebrate parameters at all. One source that does turned six blanks into none, and it changed nothing about the animal.
What verification actually changed
Checking a draft against its sources is either a formality or it is not. On this site it has changed something on every record, and this is the record of that, because a method nobody can audit is a claim rather than a method.
The first draft was written from one source. Comparing it against the second moved four of the nine fields, including the group size, which went from six to eight to ten because the smaller figure was a floor and not what the source called comfortable.
Hardness changed. So did the shape of the page: the panda and the sterbai sit inside a two degree window that the genus range hides completely, and the albino sold as a separate fish turned out to be a strain of a species already on the record.
The scientific name on the draft was wrong, which is a hard thing to publish about yourself and the clearest possible argument for checking. Four fields changed with it, and two claims were deleted outright because no source we could name stated them.
Nothing about the animal changed. What changed was which source was asked: the fish sources we had been using publish no water parameters for invertebrates, and a source that specializes in them filled every blank at once.
Photography, illustration and money
What we do
- Photographs under a license that allows it, credited in the footer, and only of the species the page is about.
- A drawn plate instead of a photograph when we do not have one of that species. One record here has a photograph. The rest carry a plate that draws the one thing we hold: the recorded adult length against an inch ruler, and the layer the record files the animal under. We do not draw a silhouette of a fish we have no reference for, because that is the same problem as using somebody else’s photograph of a different animal.
- Illustrations marked as ours, drawn to the dimensions in the record rather than traced from a photograph of a particular animal.
- Affiliate links marked as such, and only for equipment a record actually asks for. There are none on the site today.
What we never do
- Present an image as documentary proof of a specific animal, or use a photograph of one species to illustrate another.
- Put affiliate links inside a symptom page, where a worried keeper will click anything.
- Sell live animals. This is a record, not a shop, and shipping a fish is somebody else’s job.
- Invent a figure to complete a table, including lifespans, which is the field most often invented across this whole category.
Changed after publication
Three changes so far, all in August 2026, listed because a page that only records its corrections when they are flattering is not recording its corrections.
It carried a day and a night verdict for two snails, including one that said a species cleared a betta tank. Neither rested on a source we could name, and no record on this site had been written for either animal. Both are gone, and the page now prints only what our sources state about how those snails reproduce.
Four records printed a length in millimeters only, because that is the unit the source published. The source figure is kept in brackets on every one of them, so the conversion is visible rather than trusted. Nothing about the figures changed.
On four records the note behind the blank read Same reason, which works while you are reading down the table and nowhere else. Each one now says which sources were checked and what they did not state.
If a figure here is wrong, the useful message is short: the record, the field, and the source that says otherwise. We would rather change a number than defend one, and a correction with a citation gets applied the same week.
What a correction cannot be is a preference. Plenty of keepers succeed outside the ranges our sources state, and that is worth knowing, but it is not a reason to change a field that a named source states plainly. Those go into the disagreement block instead, where both positions stay visible.
Records changed after publication carry the month of the change next to the month of the original check, so a page never looks freshly verified when only one line moved.
Send a correction
The record, the field, and where the other figure comes from. That is enough.
No account. Corrections are applied on the record itself and dated there.
Questions about the method
Why so few records?
Because each one takes every source we can find on one animal and compares them field by field, and that has changed something on every record so far. Forty eight records are written. A site built by rewriting other care sheets could have a thousand by now and would be worth less than this.
Who writes this?
An editorial team, and every record carries a byline and the month it was checked. What matters more than who typed it is that no figure on the site rests on the writer: each one names the source it came from, so you can disagree with the source rather than with us.
Why is a whole field left blank?
Because no source we compile from states a figure, and taking one from a forum would make this database indistinguishable from the pages it exists to replace. Twenty seven fields on the site are blank today, and each one has a note explaining what was checked.
Is Wikipedia a reliable source for fishkeeping?
For taxonomy and distribution, where it cites primary literature, we use it. For husbandry we do not lead with it. On our shrimp record it supplied the synonym history and the maturity figure, and the water parameters came from a source that specializes in invertebrates.
Why not use the big care databases?
Because copying a database copies its errors, including the ones it copied from somewhere else. When a figure exists only in aggregators and cannot be traced to anyone who measured anything, it stays a blank here.
What happens when two sources disagree?
Both go on the page with their names on them, and the record says which we print and why. Every record we hold carries that block. It is the honest shape of the knowledge, and hiding it behind a single confident number is how most of this category is written.
Do you test any of this yourselves?
No, and the site never claims to. Every figure is a transcription from a named published source, which is a smaller claim than most care sheets make and a far easier one for you to check.
How do I know a page has not gone stale?
Each record prints the month it was checked, and the counts on the pages that summarize the database are computed when the page loads rather than typed in. When a record changes, every page that quotes its numbers changes with it.
Are there affiliate links?
None on the site today. Where a record names a piece of equipment it is because a source stated the species needs it, and the reason is printed beside the item. If a link ever appears it will be disclosed on the record itself.
What would make you delete a record?
Finding that its sources do not support it. That has already happened at the level of individual claims: two statements were deleted from the kuhli loach record because no source we could name stated them, which is the same rule applied to a sentence instead of a page.