Online Aquarium Chat Rooms and Resources - Page 2
© Winston Vaughan Schoenfeld
in each of these sites, you should find good links toward chat rooms and recommended dealers. As a word of caution, always try and find someone who has experience with a particular dealer. Now that the internet has gained so much popularity, the distance between you and the dealer makes it easy for the dealer to provide less than satisfactory service - that said, I should mention that there are many good dealers out there - just do your homework.
Just as an example of one of the above sites, let's assume that you are interested in getting a few ideas for what to put in your aquarium after you have made a trip to the local fish store. I would first take a look at fishbase.org. There you will be able to search and find information on a particular species of interest. Let's take a tiger barb for example. A search on the site would lead you to the following page:
http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesS...
this page would give you and idea of the typical environment and climate of the fish. You could then take a look at the FINS database, http://www.actwin.com/fish/index.php , and get a good picture of the fish. Finally, you probably would take a look at www.aquariumfish.net where you would find another summary of facts about the fish, and a link to a chat area where you can find someone who has experience with that particular species.
For those of you who are looking for some of the more rare species, your best bet is to take a look at one of the several fish encyclopedias, either at the library, or at my favorite place, the local fish store. With the above links, you can then usually find a good source of information about that species online, locate a dealer, and try and get in touch with someone in a chat room who currently has that particular species in their aquarium. Also, don't wait until you have already purchased your aquarium. Often knowing the type of species that you are interested in will allow you to determine the type of filtration device to use - some species do better with one particular filtration than another.
I was thinking of posting a list of additional links such as those above, but quickly realized that there is a very long list. I find that a quick search of aquarium chat rooms on a search engine such as Yahoo will quickly get you where you want to go. Whether you are a beginner looking for species that you want to place in your aquarium or a veteran who wants to locate a rare species, make sure to utilize the above sites and their chat areas to find the information you need - they are great sources, and even better, they are free.
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