redlessi

A friend of mine recently created a site that can help you determine how much you can stock for your given tank. This is something he coded using spare time and it is far from complete. If you are interested, please try this out:

http://www.AqAdvisor.com

Just to give you some feeling, this program does NOT use a simple formula such as inch per gallon. It maintains a significant DB of fishes with 19 attributes per each species. Each species also features its own bioload for their given sizes hence not all fishes are handled the same. Surface area of the water is more important than the total volume of the tank.

Thanks!

iloveengl

I was excited for this tool, but...according to your friend's site, my 12 gallon bowfront is too small for 1 golden mystery snail. Ummm, no. I think there may still be some kinks to work out. It would be really cool to see it once it was de-bugged. Maybe it would help if we new the parameters he was using?

I do hope he gets it worked out. This will be really useful site to have on hand, especially for beginners. Great idea and I hope your friend keeps working on it!

redlessi

Did you put in your tanks measurements at the top? Try it without entering the snail and see what happens. I know he is still working out the kinks and is currently updating it weekly.

iloveengl

Yep, I put in bowfront, 14, 10, 21 EDIT: 21, 10, 14. Nevermind.

angelfish220

check the program for bettas as well.... I wish I could have 20 bettas in my 55 gallon

your tank is taller then it is wide?

iloveengl

lol. I told you user error was a distinct possibility. Now lets see what it says. (I would still think even if it was taller than wide, that I would be able to fit a snail or a single tetra in there....)

With the updated parameters (LOL) the site seems to work better. So I imagine this is better suited to long tanks than tall (even though tall tanks do limit you generally)? I'm still not allowed to have a snail, though. Is my snail unhappy?

*maybe have him check the cichlid program too.
*and it says I can only have 4 sailfin mollies in a 55 gallon long tank.

I don't want your friend to feel dissuaded, though!! This is a SUPER COOL device. I think it's really cool that he can design such a thing. I can't imagine all that went into it. boggles the mind...

Borisbbadd

That would be so cool..........

small_fry

i worked out my kribensis community on there its really cool!! now i think he should make one that tells me what fish are well suited as companions to others...no?? lol

iloveengl

Hahahha! I was thinking the same thing! hehehehe glad you said it first

redlessi

He is working on compatability as the data base has the attributes but the program doesn't use them yet. It should detect if fishes are too large for the given tank size for now.

ray_sj

It seemed to work as expected when I entered the details for my two tanks with neons, guppies, and my planned additions of ottos and a DG. It's a neat tool, and I hope the kinks can be worked out!

sirdarksol

It's a decent tool, but it still does not compare to doing personal research. It doesn't give any flags for incompatible fish (it allowed me to stock a fictional 70g tank with gold barbs, a betta, neon tetras, and butterfly fish, none of which would get along with each other), and I disagree a bit with some of the stocking percentages.

redlessi

NOTHING!!!, absolutely nothing replaces personal research. It is a cool tool to accompany your research.

ATKINSON

Awesome tool!!

redlessi

I think so along with good judgement and some research....................

ApolloX54

Yeah... I like my research... but apparently my tank is 818% stocked.... if I add 221 julii cories.... who knew?

Tony G.

it says my tank 103% overstocked! lol
apperantly my bruce is too big!

10gallonmadness

That's a cool tool.

Shawnie

thats a nifty idea..someones got some time on their hands!!

as others have said, just because it says its ok, doesnt mean it will work so homework/research is your best tool when it comes to fishkeeping!

small_fry

i already knew the sorts of fish i wanted but wasnt sure how many so it worked perfectly in my case! i had previous research up my sleive also

Red1313

pretty neat. apparently all my 5.5gal betta tanks are stocked at 158%

Amanda

Hahaha, my 55 is overstocked. But I already knew that.

yhbae

Hi guys, I am one of the authors of this site. Glad to see some discussions going on around this program.

I'll try to respond to some of the existing messages moving forward...

It does require further fine tuning. I just checked out your friend's snail and currently DB says it requires 20x12 tank (basically a common 10g tank). Obviously this is too large. For the next release, I'll reduce the requirement to 5.5g tank (which has 16x8 footprint). Also, bioload for snails will be adjusted down significantly.

The two main parameters here are the fully grown up size, plus what I call it "bioload factor". These are two of the 19 attributes built into the program.

Yup this is a problem for sure. The main problem I will be tackling next is the aggression issues. Even though bioload-wise your tank might be ok, it may not be if you have aggression incompatibilities. Even worse, they may look ok because you have juveniles but when they hit certain age you have a big problem in your hand. I'd like to address this in the program. I will be looking into aspects like size, aggression within species, aggression towards other species, aggression during spawning, ability to defend itself, etc. Its gonna be interesting to see what comes out of this...

Will be coming eventually!

Incompatibility issues, I understand since the program doesn't do much yet on that respect.

As for the disagreement on the stocking %, could you list out what you have along with the tank dimension please? Perhaps there's a room here to further fine tune it.

Exactly! I agree 100%.

LOL actually I am struggling a bit with that time thingy...

I use this tool as part of the research rather than a tool that would guarantee the result. Who knows it may happen one day but not with the current knowledge DB. I will probably need to increase it by x100 times first! It's already quite big though...

redlessi - thanks for answering questions on my behalf...

ilikefish

Thank you for putting all this time into this awesome idea! and better yet thank you for not putting a price tag on it. I greatly appreciate it!

redlessi

Yhbae.......This is where I shared your link when I asked you if you did not mind. As you can see it was received well and I am sure once you finish it will be even better.

Also welcome to Fishlore!!

Shawnie

Welcome to fishlore yhbae! Im glad you joined to answer more questions and thank you for taking the time to do so
your tool has been interesting for sure...and like you said, with fine tuning and time that you have to find , it could be great!!
My only concern is with new fish keepers using it, and it telling them the fish they stock are fine for the tank.....as someone still in the learning phase (as we all are daily)seeing a link referred by another member, might make them feel safe without doing research ....
compatibility issues are the main cause of tank issues....we can always fix overstocking issues with water changes...but if the fish arent compatible, then all the water changes in the world, and understocking, wont help much...
I also appreciate you agreeing 100% that doing your homework and using the tool as a back up , is great...

yhbae

Of course not - I appreciate that you shared it. Thanks!

Thank you and I hope it will turn out nice at the end.

We do share common concerns towards novice keepers. I too have been giving advices to people who live locally around me for years and the last thing I want to do is to restrict them into a single tool and no advices from experienced human. As I mentioned in the previous posts, I will be putting some efforts to address compatibility issues. I hope the tool will be useful for people and I can gather more feedback from them as well...

Gouramiguy17

I think it would be pretty cool if you let mike put a link on his website to yourweb site when you get the kinks worked out

sirdarksol

Thanks for commenting on things, yhbae, and thanks for being willing to consider our input.

Just a heads up, if you're replying to multiple posts, you can use the multi-quote button (little page with a quotation mark and a plus sign, just to the right of the "quote" button). Click on each post you want to reply to, then hit the "post reply" button at the end of the thread.

yhbae

Got it - will use that multi-quote button moving forward. Thanks!

This release attempts to handle some of the aggression issues. Please let me know if you don't agree with the result - I'm sure it will require further fine tuning.

What's new for 2009 09 30 build
- Bioload for snails have been adjusted down significantly.
- Some aggression logic have been implemented. This is still work in progress.
- will take into account size differences
- will take into account their natural aggression between their own species and against other species.
- will take into account species that cannot tolerate its own kind within a limited space. Male betta is the first guinea pig in this category.
- will take into account tank space needed if teritorial bottom dwelling breeding pair(s) form. Will handle multiple breeding pairs of different species based on your tank size.
- Added Texas Cichlid
- Added more loach species.
- Added more tetra species.
- Added more barb species.
- Added Salvini Cichlid.
- Split betta species into male and female to handle aggression issue better.
- Algorithm refined for small tanks (under 10g).
- Algorithm detects if the tank is not high enough for selected species.
- "Clear selection" button has been fixed. Previously it was clearing all fields.
- Total number of species in DB has been increased to 235.

Once again, here's the link: AqAdvisor site.

What's new for 2009 10 07 build:

- Updated scientific name for Dwarf Loach.
- Filtration capacity algorithm has been implemented.
- Some commercially available filters are listed.
- Filtration capacity estimates used are somewhat lower than manuacturer-claimed numbers to be more realistic.
- Will warn if you don't have sufficient capacity.
- Will take into account your tank's bioload.
- For unknown filters, calculations will not be performed for now.
- Fixed a defect: territorial species are always considered bottom dwellers before this fix.
- Fixed a defect: "Display all species" vs "Display only suitable species" sometimes didn't work correctly.
- Fixed a defect: did not display temperature recommendation all the time.
- Added Fancy Gold Fish.
- Added Longfin Zebra Danio.
- Added more loach species.
- Recommends pH and hardness for selected species.
- Ability to display in Celcius and Farenheit.
- Ability to display in Gallons and Litres.
- Total number of species in DB has been increased to 246.

As usual, please check out AqAdvisor.com to access the online tool.