I am looking for a Freshwater website for beginners

[rckmtl]

Hi everyone. I put this in the off topic section since it is about freshwater fish.

I am looking for a good site, that I can recommend to people new to the hobby that want information about tropical fishkeeping. I have a lot of qualifications for the site though, and have not been able to find anything good so far through Google.

Here are the qualifications-

Main page should have a very easy to use interface, preferably with more pictures then words. It should be very easy to see the links to sub-pages.

It should not have a bunch of ads or links to random things, unless they are -very- subtle.

It should have sub-pages broken down into easy to understand catagories. ie: Tank setup, Choosing the right fish, how to feed, ect. Not stuff like- 'So you want a tank!', or other vauge things.

All the information should be simple to understand, without the article adding tons of personal opinons, 'fun facts', advanced information, stories about the authors fish, ect.

The information should be direct and not confusing.
It should say things like 'This is how to setup a filter' and then give steps to follow. It should not do things like discuss how there's actually a dozen different opinions on the best filtration setup and so on. I want a beginner to look at the info and say 'Hey, I can do that', rather then feeling like now they need to read a books worth of information just to understand the filter(or whatever) debate.

If it gives 'recommended fish for tanks' it must give -good- recomendations. I saw a few sites that kept saying to keep schooling fish in singles or pairs in a 10 gal, or to 'add a male and female platy/molly'....most starting fishkeepers don't want lots of baby fish to appear out of nowhere and one to one isn't the right ratio a lot of times...

I could go on, but I think you have an idea now of what I'm looking for.

Thank you for taking the time to read my long post. I really appreciate any sugestions you may have.

 

[DaveK]

While FW fish tend to be less difficult to keep, and don't usually have the demands or a reef system, there is still a lot to learn.

In my opinion, no matter how well a web site is constructed, and how good the coverage is, it's just about impossible to create a site a beginner could learn what they need to know to set up even a FW system.

My advice to a new reef keeper is to go out and buy several good books on state of the art reef systems, reed them and get the basic knowledge you need to set up and maintain the system.

The same advice would also apply to a new FW person. Only the book titles would change, depending upon the goals of the person.

For general FW fish information, the classic book, Exotic Aquarium Fishes by William T. Innes is still excellent, and still in print. Originally published in 1935, it's been the "bible" for FW tropical fish for over 70 years. If you are a little in to book collecting, it's worth trying to find an old copy published by the Innes Publishing company. It will contain the original Innes photographs and illustrations.

 

[rckmtl]

I agree that a website has a hard time doing the same job of conveying all the needed information that a book can.

Normally I would recommed books to people, however, in this case, I am not the one who is going to be passing the info along to the end customer.

The senario we are looking at here is a store clerk at non-petstore locations (wal-mart, ect) who may not know that much about fish, but is still trying to help the customers. They would have a hard time recommeding the right books, and the customers who were shopping outside of a petstore may not want to hunt down, buy, and read through fish books. So I'd like to be able to give them a website that they can pass along to customers as being a good place to get started learning the basics.