Monster Fish Keepers Book

[johnnymax]

Catch 'em all, Rawwfishing and Joe Slay Em are jokes who don't know jack *hit about properly keeping monster fish. They just do it for the views (as do so many others), which inspires newbies to go out and buy these monster fish, and with no good knowledge gleaned from watching these fishermen turned 'fish keepers'. Imho the results are not good for the hobby..............

WOW! That is a great argument for the NEED for a good book on Monster Fish Keeping. Maybe give one to the books to each of them so they can become more knowledgeable and also promote the book.


Has anyone seen the "Fish Puncher" It is just pictures, so it must be instagram or something. I cannot believe all the tropical fish he catches in Florida.
I am so jealous!

 

[RD.]

Maybe I am missing something, but this concept sounds boring, and clinical, the opposite of what "social" media should be. Take away the personal interaction, and the peer reviewed commentary, and you might as well just start a blog. A multi tiered blog that will be maintained by those who rarely keep a fish from acquisition to death.
How often does that actually happen in this hobby, short of some very premature deaths? Not many I think. And what shall we all glean from that experience? That the owner failed in his/her role as a fish keeper? There will be no shortage of that.

If I may be so bold, allow me to play devils advocate for a moment and address some of your comments, Viktor.

- too much off topic or merely unneeded filler and
-- too many (99%?) unfinished threads with no follow through and
-- too much superficial and redundant info, or curt advices to the point of them being not helpful, one liners and
-- too many unneeded threads - for each update or a photo or a video, many MFKers start a new thread, while the fish is the same, and
-- often no way to know if a person's post in any given thread is (likely) trustworthy and experience based or not.

1. Agree about the off topic and unneeded filler. IMO this could & should fall under the role of moderators. A gentle nudge in a discussion, or sometimes via PM is sometimes all that should be needed to keep a topic on track. I have mentioned this, more than once, to the PTB.

Even still, this shouldn't stop anyone from using the SEARCH function. Yes, it takes more time to skim for relevant content, but the content is still there for anyone that wants to search.

2. 99%? Really? I don't think so, that certainly doesn't play out in the threads that I tend to read, or take part in.
Probably the highest count would be in illness section, but not everyone wants to declare their failure to the masses.

3. Again, if this becomes a problem, it should become a moderation issue.

4. Unneeded threads? I don't think that we want to limit content, unless of course it violates the TOS. Again, this would fall under the watchful eyes of the mods.

5. One way to know is to check that persons profile. Length of time on the forum, number of likey likes, awards/trophies, etc. It's called reputation capitol. You have some, I have some, it comes with time and can be key when comments are being viewed by the persons peers, as well as those new to MFK.

And last, but not least .......

This would take a long time and a consistent, responsible, and dedicated effort from everyone

I simply don't see this happening, at least not by the masses. Perhaps had this begun in 2005, but going into 2020, after a loss of many of our long time members who were the foundation of building this forum, I simply don't see it playing out.

Might as well give the kids what they want, a video to watch.

 

[johnnymax]

......Might as well give the kids what they want, a video to watch.

Someone needs to educate the next generation. They too will one day grow up and settle down.

 

[Chicxulub]

Neil, you make valid points as always sir.

The comment about having had started this back on day 1 hit particularly close to the mark for me tbh. I've been contemplating the issue of how to make this initiative backwards compatible all day at work.

*IF* we did this now, I have the means to sort it well: I could implement something similar to the Marketplace with required fields for tank size, filtration,etc. I could also make it sortable by family or region; ie African or American cichlids, catfish or characins, etc; to make it easier for people to search. Edit- and now that I think of it, such sorting only adds another layer of complexity to the already fairly well sorted order of the forum ?

But, even so, this raises the shadow of the problem of how do my shiney new tools work for the millions of threads of discussions to already exist, when such toys aren't backwards compatible to the old data without thousands of hours of work to manually apply it?

I'm flummoxed.

I love the idea, but idk how to proceed. I'm of the mindset that videos to counter the bulls-- might be the best bet to control all the bad info.

I'm open to ideas from the community. ?‍

 

[Oompa Loompa]

I like Viktor's idea, but agree with RD that it likely won't work. Look at the stickies - most of the well-written ones are done by members who aren't active anymore. Most of the big tanks are either shut down or kept quiet nowadays. Vincent's gone for a few years, Viktor is one of the few people running four-figure systems that regularly posts solid information now. Arapaimag was great, hasn't posted in years. JohnPTC was great about posting, hasn't been around in over 5 years. These, IMO, are the people that should be writing the care guides and the books on monster tanks.

Unfortunately, the people with these setups simply don't have the time to sit down and write a full book.

I'm thinking the way to go would be Youtube videos. TLkmDN, myaquaticdiary, whatever his name is (with the 60k gallon pond somewhere in Asia) has a few videos that might be good starting points.

An issue with the videos is that there will still be people who just skip over them. Why should they believe the MFK video saying a RTC needs thousands of gallons, when some big Youtuber's video says they can be kept in a 300?

 

[RD.]

Someone needs to educate the next generation. They too will one day grow up and settle down.

I like to think that I have been doing my part for the past 12 years.......


Rob et al, I'm not sure what the answer to all of this is, but I do believe that videos such as one sees on youtube seems to be the next wave. A video seems to hold the attention span longer than simply reading text.

And while I agree that there will be people that will skip over the content, just like they do on the forums, at least until someone agrees with them and gives them the green light to proceed - this is something that one will never stop. At the very least MFK would be providing accurate info & solid guidance based on real world experience. The rest would be up to those watching. Just an idea to increase views/hits - maybe get Viktor to wear a Speedo? lol

 

[Chicxulub]

I'm on board with the videos idea, but it'll require quite a bit of homework on my part for that before I jump on that bandwagon. My new house is almost done, so hopefully I'll have a bit of free time for things like this soon.

As to the journals, that may be workable as well.

How would you MFKers feel about having a dedicated journals section that's sortable by tank info and species, has an active curator to ensure quality, and is intended to be treated as informative? I've seen people call it basically a blog, but so long as this is a supplement to the normal threads and not replacing them, I fail to see how it's bad; so I'd like some input from you all.

I do still intend to streamline the forum quite a bit moving into 2020, I just haven't had time to do it yet.

 

[Oompa Loompa]

I'm on board with the videos idea, but it'll require quite a bit of homework on my part for that before I jump on that bandwagon. My new house is almost done, so hopefully I'll have a bit of free time for things like this soon.

As to the journals, that may be workable as well.

How would you MFKers feel about having a dedicated journals section that's sortable by tank info and species, has an active curator to ensure quality, and is intended to be treated as informative? I've seen people call it basically a blog, but so long as this is a supplement to the normal threads and not replacing them, I fail to see how it's bad; so I'd like some input from you all.

I do still intend to streamline the forum quite a bit moving into 2020, I just haven't had time to do it yet.

I think it's a good idea for a section to add, it would be good to have it there for those who want to read it. I just don't think it's the best thing to provide to newbies to the hobby, who likely aren't going to read more than a page or two of a thread.
I don't know if it's possible for the mods to do this or not - but could you allow the thread starter to edit the first post of their "journal" thread? That way every time they post an update in a post at the end, they can also briefly edit the first post, which would sum up their findings altogether. This might help with newcomers actually reading some things.

Another idea I've got, that would eliminate lots of unnecessary threads and certainly clear up some space, is a compatibility database. We could use Excel, google sheets, something of the sort to list out a few hundred species that regularly come up, and list their minimum tank dimensions, water temperature range, pH range, and compare each species to every other species in the database as to whether or not they're compatible. For example, puffers and rays would be "not compatible", plecos and rays would be "with caution", and arowana and rays would be "compatible". We could also list out standard tank sizes in the page.
That would probably get rid of the bulk of the "can I keep _____ with _____" and the "can I keep ____ in a _____ gallon?" threads.

The way I am envisioning the tank size feature working would be some kind of search function, where the user puts in the fish they want to keep, and puts in the gallons of their tank. It would then prompt the user for their tank's dimensions - if they are something standard (like a 55, 75, 120, etc), it will autofill this. Based on that, it would list out all fish that will work and will not work in that size tank.
The compatibility function would have the user select however many fish, and compare pH, water temperature, and the compatibility as far as temperament goes. Then it would list out the fish, and present all the compatibility issues, if there are any.

This way - the only real stocking threads would be more complicated ones, with people asking "can I keep _____, _____, and _____ together in a _____ gallon?". That would be much more difficult to actually program, compared to the other two which could be done mostly, if not entirely in Excel.

 

[islandguy11]

WOW! That is a great argument for the NEED for a good book on Monster Fish Keeping. Maybe give one to the books to each of them so they can become more knowledgeable and also promote the book.

Valid point in a way -- that said all the info those peeps need is sitting right here on MFK already and has been for many years -- and some of them are/were members of MFK (e.g. Joey King of DIY, who also has plenty of critics insofar as sensationalism to get views/money).

And esp. insofar as the real jokers (which I personally would not really include Joey King of DIY even if I don't like everything about his style), what's kept them from taking advantage of this great source of info already? Too proud? Too cool? Too interested in drama=views=money?

 

[Matteus]

I think it's a good idea for a section to add, it would be good to have it there for those who want to read it. I just don't think it's the best thing to provide to newbies to the hobby, who likely aren't going to read more than a page or two of a thread.
I don't know if it's possible for the mods to do this or not - but could you allow the thread starter to edit the first post of their "journal" thread? That way every time they post an update in a post at the end, they can also briefly edit the first post, which would sum up their findings altogether. This might help with newcomers actually reading some things.

Another idea I've got, that would eliminate lots of unnecessary threads and certainly clear up some space, is a compatibility database. We could use Excel, google sheets, something of the sort to list out a few hundred species that regularly come up, and list their minimum tank dimensions, water temperature range, pH range, and compare each species to every other species in the database as to whether or not they're compatible. For example, puffers and rays would be "not compatible", plecos and rays would be "with caution", and arowana and rays would be "compatible". We could also list out standard tank sizes in the page.
That would probably get rid of the bulk of the "can I keep _____ with _____" and the "can I keep ____ in a _____ gallon?" threads.

The way I am envisioning the tank size feature working would be some kind of search function, where the user puts in the fish they want to keep, and puts in the gallons of their tank. It would then prompt the user for their tank's dimensions - if they are something standard (like a 55, 75, 120, etc), it will autofill this. Based on that, it would list out all fish that will work and will not work in that size tank.
The compatibility function would have the user select however many fish, and compare pH, water temperature, and the compatibility as far as temperament goes. Then it would list out the fish, and present all the compatibility issues, if there are any.

This way - the only real stocking threads would be more complicated ones, with people asking "can I keep _____, _____, and _____ together in a _____ gallon?". That would be much more difficult to actually program, compared to the other two which could be done mostly, if not entirely in Excel.

This is great. Each of these “search “sections could have a disclaimer stating that this is a general rule, this does not factor in each fishes personalities. Some can be meaner or nicer than typical. Also stating that therecan be an exception to each of these general match ups according to which fish can be housed with others. To avoid (some) of the boneheads who try to match up incompatible species, or even compatible at lethal sizes.

And for the typical tank sizes, include growth rates, saying x fish should typically be at this size after a year or 2 if kept in good conditions. This would give a baseline to work with so people at very least have a guideline on what to base it on. Then when people come start those threads we can just post a link to the database.