Today I added “categories” for Freshwater and Saltwater Fish Species in the fish picture photo gallery. You can upload your pics if you’d like to show off your species! I think this will be cool once we start getting some of the categories filled out with pics. Couple of things: Read the rest of this entry »
Hi All - I upgraded the forum software to the latest and greatest version over the weekend. So, what’s this mean for the members? Well, let’s see: Read the rest of this entry »
A couple days late due to some scheduling issues on my part prevented me from pushing out the magazine this month on the 1st. Lots of great stuff to read this month including member spotlights, forum thread of the month and some interesting articles. Check Read the rest of this entry »
Maintaining and testing the calcium and alkalinity levels in a saltwater reef tank set up can be quite the chore if you have a tank full of growing corals. There is a piece of aquarium equipment that can help you out called the calcium reactor. Read the rest of this entry »
Have you ever had to deal with green bubble algae in your saltwater aquarium? We have and it’s not fun. Just wrote an article on what to do and how to deal with this algae without pulling what’s left of your hair out.
There are several different varieties of this bubble algae and we talk about the most common one - Ventricaria ventricosa. Hope it helps you deal with this algae. If you have a tip on dealing with this algae post it on the article page and we’ll add it! Read the article here: Green Bubble Algae.
We’ve always thought it would be a cool idea to have our favorite fish species printed on a t-shirt and now it’s possible! We’ve hooked up with zazzle.com to have these shirts printed. You can totally customize all of these shirts to your liking. Change the shirt color, shirt style and even change the image size and plug in your own text!
If you’re interested, check it out here: FishLore T-shirts. We’ll be adding new fish species for the t-shirt designs frequently, so check back often. Have fun!
Just uploaded the latest Fish Lore Aquarium Magazine for April 2008. We have more member spotlights, a book review, aquarium chiller review, an article on cyanobacteria and a freshwater and saltwater fish profile. Here are Read the rest of this entry »
If you have a larger saltwater tank, say around a 100 gallons or so, with little to no invertebrates you might just be interested in the Harlequin Tuskfish. This fish is a beauty and will do well with similar sized species although avoid housing them with inverts. They should leave the corals and clams alone but may eat smaller fish species and motile inverts. Here’s the fish profile if you’re interested in learning more about these fish: Harlequin Tuskfish
This week I read an interesting book on aquarium design. I’m not the most creative person and any creative help I can get I’ll take. If you’re looking for inspiration for an upcoming aquarium setup or redesign you may want to read this book first.
For the saltwater tank owners or the cold-water fish species keepers out there we recently reviewed a “nano” chiller.
If you have a smaller tank less than 40 gallons and you are interested in getting an aquarium chiller you might be interested in this chiller. Read the review here: JBJ Mini Arctica Aquarium Chiller
Just uploaded the March 2008 issue of the Fish Lore Aquarium Magazine. This month we have more Fish Lore member spotlights, nano tank setup, betta tank setup, book reviews and freshwater and saltwater fish profiles. Thanks to Tom, Sabi, Atm and COBC for their help.
Here are the articles for this issue:
Looking for a book to help identify those corals at the store and what the requirements are for the various species? If so, this book could be what you’re looking for. Then again, if you’re looking for very detailed info on each of the coral species, it may not be the book for you. Check out the review here: Corals Reference Guide
A new saltwater book review is online. The Nano-Reef Handbook is geared towards those hobbyists interested in keeping those small nano tanks. For those saltwater hobbyists interested in setting up a nano aquarium, is this book worth the investment? Find out by reading the review on The Nano-Reef Handbook.
Recently I put up a review of the nintendo wii game Endless Ocean. This is not your normal game where you’re constantly button smashing. Thank goodness, right? It’s not rated “T” or “M”, but it is rated “E” for everyone. Everything coming out for the xbox 360 or the ps3 seems to be rated mature or teen. When you have kids that you want to play games with this gets kinda frustrating after awhile. The Nintendo Wii is so much more family friendly. Endless Ocean is a game Read the rest of this entry »
Hi All - I added the functionality to list your aquarium information in your profile that will display in all of your posts in the forum. This was recommended by the Fish Lore moderators and is a good one. Often times when asking for help we have to repeat the same old question: “What are your tank water parameters?” Read the rest of this entry »
Hi All! I just uploaded the latest Fish Lore Aquarium Magazine issue for February 2008. The articles this month: Read the rest of this entry »
A new saltwater aquarium equipment review is up on the FishLore.com. There are a ton of really crappy skimmers out there for smaller saltwater and reef type tanks. Many hobbyists (including me) tried to go the cheap route and start a tank with an inexpensive protein skimmer. We soon find out that it doesn’t work and so then we get the next one up in price. That one still doesn’t work very good so we finally do what we should have done from the beginning and thoroughly research and shell out the cash for the more expensive skimmer.
Is this another crappy one or does it Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve wanted a nano cube for some time now. I’ve been saving up for a much larger saltwater reef tank too but just could not wait any longer. MTS (Multiple Tank Syndrom) reared it’s ugly head and I got the 28 Gallon JBJ Nanocube with 150 watt HQI Metal Halide. This aquarium is really nice and I’m very happy with it. If you’re interested in seeing how I’ve set mine up, see JBJ Nano Cube Setup
You can post comments on the nano cube setup page too. If you have one of these nano cubes I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts, tips, advice, etc.
Happy New Year!
The January issue of the FishLore magazine is out. We have member spotlights, fish profiles, a forum ettiquette article, an aquarium first aid article, the fish and aquarium of the month contest winners from December are announced, a continuation of Atm’s nano saltwater tank setup series and an article on aquarium chillers.
Here are the article links: Read the rest of this entry »
Just finished a new article on these very pricey pieces of equipment. Freshwater hobbyists can probably skip over this article, unless you’re interested in keeping coldwater species. Reef Tank hobbyists running high-output lighting systems may be interested in getting an aquarium chiller. Read the rest of this entry »
Seasons Greetings all! This is just an fyi that the December Fishlore magazine has been released. Thanks to all the article authors that contributed and congrats to the fish and aquarium photo of the month contest winner! Winners will receive their $10 e-gift to Petsmart.com via email from Mike.
This month the magazine features the following articles… Read the rest of this entry »
We just released the November issue of the Fish Lore Online Aquarium Magazine. This month we have member spotlights on COBettaCouple, Tim and Armadillo. 4 fish profiles were written on the Cockatoo Cichlid, Purple Firefish, Six Line Wrasse and Read the rest of this entry »
Greetings - this is just a quick note to let you now about a new feature on the forum. We now have arcade games for our members. If you want to waste a few minutes, stop by the arcade and see how well you do at some of the different games. Read the rest of this entry »
The October issue of the Fish Lore Online Aquarium and Fish Magazine is ready for you to read! We had another great turn out of articles from the members and we’re sure you’ll enjoy reading this issue. The October issue includes…
We just launched a new auction and classifieds system for FishLore members. You can create your own ads and set them up to be in either auction, classified, or wanted format.
For example, if you want to sell an item using the bidding system you’d select “auction” when setting up the ad. If you want to sell an item with a fixed price you’d select the “fixed price” ad type. You can also post ads for items wanted. Read the rest of this entry »
We’ve tallied the votes and the winning pictures for the fish of the month and aquarium of the month contests are… Read the rest of this entry »
We had some pretty big uprades last month on the forum and photo gallery. We’ve switched software for both applications and while there were a few hiccups, I think things are getting back to normal now… Hopefully these upgrades will help things run smoother and give us the ability to easily add enhancements going forward for our members. Read the rest of this entry »
At the urging of the members we have decided to launch our own monthly online magazine. These articles will be written by the FishLore members and edited by Mike. We had an awesome turn out for articles with some being held in reserve for the next issue. If future responses are as good as the first one we should have some very interesting magazine issues for the future. Read the rest of this entry »
The winners of the latest fish and aquarium photo contests have been determined. And the winners are…. Read the rest of this entry »
The winners of the latest fish and aquarium photo contests have been determined. And the winners are…. Read the rest of this entry »
We recently added the Koi profile to the website. This species, Cyprinus carpio, is recommended for the backyard pond or extremely large aquariums only. They simply grow way too big for most home aquariums. We get receive lots of correspondence from Fish Lore visitors and it’s worrisome how many are keeping koi in a fish tank. Yeee-ikes! Read the rest of this entry »
There had been some talk about coming up with some new member names for the fish forum. We have been using the default names that come with the software since the beginning. So we came up with 6 different groups of names for the members to vote on and they decided that they liked the following: Read the rest of this entry »
We recently finished adding some cool new mods for the forum. One is the Google member map for the SMF forum software. You can place your pin and keep zooming in until you can see your house! For the younger members, please, please, please don’t use this feature or if you do, don’t put your pin on your exact location.
Also added some new smiley sets and new forum avatars. The previous smileys were getting kind of old and it’s always good to add new stuff.
One last thing before I go, we are voting on new member names on the forum. There are six groups/options to choose from, so if you haven’t already, get over there and vote. I’ll keep the voting open for a few days so more members can participate.
Thanks,
Mike
The winners of the June 2007 Fish of the Month and Aquarium of the month photo contests have been determined.
Yesterday I upgraded the forum software to the latest version of SMF, which is currently version 1.1.3. It took a few hours to do a major backup of the database, attachments and other important files and then the upgrade started. It took a couple of tries and once had a CPU exceeded error, but it finally clicked in and the upgrade finished successfully.
We have a slightly new look and feel to the fish and aquarium forum but the main reason for upgrading was for security enhancments and hopefully new mod packages that will be coming out. There were some issues with some older mod packages that we we’re running (member location map, smf seo, etc) and we are starting from scratch with all new mod packages. I will continue to make changes as needed and implement ideas raised by our members. Some of the best ideas have come from the Fish Lore members.
New avatars are also available and we’ll be adding more soon. If you’re not a member yet, stop by and browse our Aquarium Fish Forum. I think you’ll like it. We have some fantastic members (3500+) and we’re growing daily.
Thanks for reading,
Mike
New article for those freshwater hobbyists out there that are interested in setting up a saltwater aquarium but weren’t sure if they were ready for the task. We try to keep it simple and easy to understand. Differences in setup, costs, equipment and aquarium maintenance are discussed. Check it out: Freshwater vs. Saltwater Aquarium
The Fish Lore forum is growing well and we have tons of fantastic members that go to great lengths to help others with their fish and aquarium problems. It’s really cool to see folks helping each other they way they do. I wanted to write this post not to brag about the members here (I’m very proud of our members) but to help those new to fish forums or even forums in general. This post has advice on structuring your questions in order to help the forum members understand your situation better so that they can provide a good response to your inquiry. Read the rest of this entry »
Since the vacation days are upon us, I wrote a new article on what to do with your fish and aquarium(s) while you’re on vacation. Is it possible for your fish to go that long without food? What should you do before your leave? Is there a list of things to give a fish sitter? You betcha - check out the article here: Going on vacation - what to do with your fish
Yesterday I added an article about how to setup a hang on the back of the tank refugium using an AquaClear Power Filter. These aquaclears are nice to use because of they way they’re set up and have a larger open area conducive for a mini-refugium. You can get one of these setup for less than Read the rest of this entry »
I recently wrote and uploaded an article that explains the equipment and steps involved in setting up a reef tank. A reef tank is a saltwater aquarium that is used primarily to showcase soft and hard stony corals and invertebrates. Fish are kept in a reef tank too, though not stocked Read the rest of this entry »
The May 2007 winners for the Fish of the month and Aquarium of the month photo contests have been determined. Read the rest of this entry »
This past week the fish lore forum crossed over the 3000 member mark! The forum is growing incredibly fast - all thanks to the wonderful members we have here. I’m often amazed at the patience and willingness to help others that our members demonstrate on a daily basis on the forum. Read the rest of this entry »
We now have a sister website called http://www.fishloreblog.com that will be used to house the FishLore member blogs. I think this is going to be a lot of fun and it can give those members that want to, a chance to run their own blog.
Having a blog has been a really cool experience and I didn’t expect to like blogging as much as I do and I hope those that have signed up enjoy the blog thing too. There are so many things you can do with wordpress - many themes and plugins are available and you could literally spend hours sorting through them all. Themes are the look and feel of a blog and the blog plugins are the “widgets” that you can use to enhance the administration and the user experience. Read the rest of this entry »