Aquarium-Review.com ?

ThinIce

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Hi all

Have been lurking here for a little over six months. Initially was going to get a 50 gal setup, but money issues hit and am now looking at a mere 10g :rolleyes:

Anyhoo - point of this post is that whilst there are MANY general help / fish forums / fish profile sites, there appear to be very few offering comprehensive well edited reviews (or reader opinion) of Aquarium products (be it tanks / kits, plants, filters, heaters etc etc etc)

Now coming from a PC building background, where we review the living hell out of everything, test it, stress test it and then review it some more this seems very weird. Especially to someone who finds trusting sales assistants dubious at the very best of times :p

For some products I can indeed see why a review aspect is unimportant , but i'd be interested in anyone who knows of any aquarium product review sites out there on the web.

If there aren't any, what are your thoughts on an Aquarium review website, where products (whatever they may be) can be reviewed and then those reviews rated and commented on by others? Personally I would find this very useful, but the more adept and experienced of you may disagree on need for something like this (but ironically would likely have enough experience to actually write balanced reviews)

Either way would be interested in hearing your thoughts. IF theres enough interest it would be something i'd be interested in taking forward (obviously with help ;) )

Either that or call me silly and i'll fade back into the background
:-( :unsure:
 
you would have to put yur email on here. I know of one that has product reviews but ti also has a fish forums o i cant post it here
 
I think your idea is wonderful. The problem, as with any review site, is making sure that your reviewers are not somehow going to profit from their reviews. You don't want people who work for a LFS (or more likely, a chain store) posting about how wonderful a product is when it is actually awful. Generally, the answer to this is either to let only "trusted" parties make reviews (very difficult, since how do you decide who a "trusted" party should be when we're talking about a hobby here) or to get enough reviews that the sheer volume of goods/bads/mediocres will outweigh the potential shills. That means that you would have to get some good exposure for your site, either through having links from related fish-friendly sites or by getting some good word of mouth started. (Of course, TFF could probably get that kicked off fairly well.) I don't want to discourage you, but there's no sense in going through all of the work of setting up a good site only to have no one reviewing! Also, you might want to consider having the site moderated, since there is sometimes a fine line between opinion and libel!

As for other sites, I have never really looked for sites like the one you're describing, so there may be some good ones out there that I can't recommend. But www.epinion.com does have reviews for some aquarium products. You could check there for specific products or just look up "aquarium filters" or somesuch and see what has been reviewed. Because they are not a dedicated fishkeeping site, they don't have a lot of aquarium related products reviewed there, but even if they don't have what you're looking for, they are a good example of a well-organized reviews site.

Good luck in your ventures. I think a site like the one you're proposing would be great, and I would definitely write reviews for it. :cool:

-- Pamela
 
here is a link to some reviews on complete-kits.

In general I think the idea of a review site is good. I've been looking at automatic feeders lately and can't find any really good reviews in one place.
 
By the way... Not to minimize money woes (I think most of us can relate), but I would highly suggest that you try to wait and save up for a 20 gallon if you can. Unless your concern is a stand, and many times those can be gotten secondhand, the change in price for filters, etc., is frequently not that substantial. I have a 20 gallon hand-me-down tank and am working toward getting a 55 gallon, and I can tell you that I would've ripped my hair out -- and probably have killed some fish along the way -- if I'd started with a 10 gallon. :p

Once you do all of the reading and such, you realize just how few fish can go into a 10 gallon tank and just how many problems people seem to have keeping their small tanks stable. There seems to be much more leeway with a 20 gallon tank, and of course you will be able to stock more fish. Since that is what most of us are looking for when we start fishkeeping (and let's face it -- many of us never grow out of that phase!), it's common to see people posting about their 10 gallons which are stocked as if they are 20 gallon tanks. And to see them posting about dead or sickly fish.

I'm not putting down 10 gallon tanks or trying to put your dreams on hold indefinitely. I'm just saying that (if you're like me) the first thing you will want once the small tank is stocked is a larger tank. :) You're obviously a very patient and cautious person, judging from how long you've been researching fishkeeping. Why not save the initial step (and just a bit more money) and start out with a larger tank if it's at all possible. Just something to consider.

Sorry to go off on a tangent, ^_^
Pamela
 
I agree with pahansen that you may get people with a vested interest trying to promote certain products. From my point of view its a great idea, after all how do you know that the staff in the lps are giving you the best advice? Good luck if you decide to go along with this project. I would visit your site looking for help.


:fish: :fish: :fish: :fish: :fish:
 
ThinIce said:
Hi all

Have been lurking here for a little over six months. Initially was going to get a 50 gal setup, but money issues hit and am now looking at a mere 10g :rolleyes:

Anyhoo - point of this post is that whilst there are MANY general help / fish forums / fish profile sites, there appear to be very few offering comprehensive well edited reviews (or reader opinion) of Aquarium products (be it tanks / kits, plants, filters, heaters etc etc etc)

Now coming from a PC building background, where we review the living hell out of everything, test it, stress test it and then review it some more this seems very weird. Especially to someone who finds trusting sales assistants dubious at the very best of times :p

For some products I can indeed see why a review aspect is unimportant , but i'd be interested in anyone who knows of any aquarium product review sites out there on the web.

If there aren't any, what are your thoughts on an Aquarium review website, where products (whatever they may be) can be reviewed and then those reviews rated and commented on by others? Personally I would find this very useful, but the more adept and experienced of you may disagree on need for something like this (but ironically would likely have enough experience to actually write balanced reviews)

Either way would be interested in hearing your thoughts. IF theres enough interest it would be something i'd be interested in taking forward (obviously with help ;) )

Either that or call me silly and i'll fade back into the background
:-( :unsure:
You can make yur own stand. its really easy. I made mine for 40$
 
I'll second pahansen's comments about getting a bigger tank. I started with a 29 gallon and already am on the brink of being overstocked. I want to put a tank on my desk at work but realize that a 10 gal is the max I could do and can't come up with much I can put in it, maybe 5 or 6 tetras or guppies. You may as well start saving your money anyway as you will probably soon have MTS (miltiple tank syndrome). You will wiant a 2nd tank and then a 3rd. Can you see where this is going? It is a wonderful hobby but addictive.
 
Agree with rdd...very addictive. I grabbed my sister's 10 gallon unused and now I want to try a nano reef. Save and get a bigger tank if you can. Also, in response to your original question, here is a place that has influenced many of my purchases. I even emailed the guy to thank and compliment him. Let me know what you think of the link. SH

http://www.cloudytanks.com/
 
Thanks for all the comments.


Pam - yeah you make a good point. Currently I'm thinking the style of reviews would have to be pretty regimented with guidelines on making supportable statements based on evidence such as photos and stats rather than more story / stream of conciousness style reviews.

Perhaps a good way to start off in this regard would be to initially populate the site with reviews written by long time members of sites such as this one :p . Any lower level (ie 'come in off the street) user could comment, or write a short addendum to the review along with adding their own scores. Thus providing a community aspect

Doing things that way would get the ball rolling and sort of (but not completely) side step the possibility of too much bias.

The alternative I guess would be to do a wiki style site, although I think for this purpose it would not be that clear to read and would become too cluttered too quickly.


SH - That is kind of what i'm talking about and some of the reviews do look useful. It'd be my ideal to do the site along more modern (ie with some form of document / content management system) lines. Also i'd probably want to break the reviews up into sections based on a set template to make products easier to compare etc / have a searchable database and so on and so forth.


With regards to the tank - its still my plan to get a Rio 180 or something similar (possibly bigger!) as soon as I can afford it. The idea of the 10 Gallon had been to get a Betta and possibly some cories to 'get my feet wet' (scuse the pun) with the hobby. However as you've said i've seen it mentioned many a time that the larger the amount of water = the more stable = the more tolerant of slight mistakes, so I'll start having a look at some 20 Gal setups. B)
 

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