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What's new for 2010 09 13 build:Just updated a site with minor content revisions. To access the application, please click on AqAdvisor site.

Hi guys, I just published another minor release of AqAdvisor. If you have any requests or feedback, please let me know! Thanks.

Thanks. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Thanks for the feedback. For the next build (probably Sunday), I am aiming to get salt water stocking calculator out. It will initially feature only few species but just like the freshwater version, it will grow over time.

inch per gallon absolutely doesn't work for 90% of the cases. Fish bioload is more proportional to the weight of the fish, not the length. Plus, as someone else mentioned above, some fishes are more active than others, and some will create more mess than others. And as mentioned again, some require more space than others. So in some cases, bioload-wise it might be enough but there may not be enough space. AqAdvisor uses all of these aspects. Out of more than 40 attributes for each species, two of them are called "bioload factor" and "minimum tank size". Every species has its own set of attributes independent from each other.

Saved your comments - your comments sound sensible. I'll consider them when I am ready to look into plants again. Thanks!

Thanks. Yes, support for plants have been discussed frequently. The only issue I see at the moment is how to ask users to enter what and how much of each plants they own. Going by strands or weight seem too vague. I am open to suggestions in this area...

You are not the first person to tell me that they ended up with 3+ pages worth of warnings. Those are quite a fix, I have to admit. AqAdvisor is conservative so it may report a lot of warnings. If you understand each one and have a plan to deal with it, it might be ok. As an example, if it tells you "fish xxx will become food for fish yyy", then either let me know that it is wrong (then I'll fix it in DB) or do something about it, as in the long run, you will loose the smaller species. Which species do you own that are missing in the list? hi there, I am still accepting new species into AqAdvisor. If you could let me know what's missing, I'll look into it.

You are not the first person to tell me that they ended up with 3+ pages worth of warnings. Those are quite a fix, I have to admit. AqAdvisor is conservative so it may report a lot of warnings. If you understand each one and have a plan to deal with it, it might be ok. As an example, if it tells you "fish xxx will become food for fish yyy", then either let me know that it is wrong (then I'll fix it in DB) or do something about it, as in the long run, you will loose the smaller species. Which species do you own that are missing in the list?

Thanks. It is a lot of work but it is also very rewarding when I see people use them and helping them out on this hobby. A lot of people are helping me out though - I can't possibly do all the research alone... For others: If you have any species that are missing in AqAdvisor or see any results AqAdvisor report that seem wrong, please let me know. I will fix those!

Who doesn't?

wow...this is a great site...good job. Thanks.

Hi again. Thanks for posting the thread on this forum - looking for as much feedback as I can.

Hi guys, I am the one who created AqAdvisor. If you have any questions, please let me know - will gladly answer them. Initially, I populated 65% of the full capacity in the capacity box but I changed this because some people didn't agree that I should take 65% (I am doing this to be conservative). So now, the box displays 100% capacity but internally it still uses 65%. This applies to all filters, including FX5. Not sure, would definatly like to know more about the underlying calcs. The small tanks seem weighted. It says 33 Endlers are 100% stock for 15G, and 140 for a 90G (linear would be 200). You can ask me more specific questions if you like. It really is based heavily on reverse engineering. I came up with a general formula to calculate bioload but hundreds of actual stock suggestions I collected from different forums have been tested against. To give you an idea, each species has more than 40 independent attributes, one of which is the length. Weight for each selected species is calculated and used as part of bioload calculation. This alone, wasn't enough because not all equal length'ed fishes feature the same bioload hence I have another attribute called "bioload factor" which allows me to adjust individual fish net bioload levels. Its just a matter of time before I can nail bioload of all species. At times, users will let me know that I am off with some species. For most common species though, I am pretty comfortable with what it reports. Bioload was the easy part. Compatibility is something else. I essentially have 800x800 matrix which allows me to describe the compatibility between any species I have in DB. Since there are too many cells for me to populate manually, I have bunch of general rules to help populate them. And I can define exception rules (both positive and negative kinds) to override any results derived using these general rules. In other words, if you can describe the behavior between any two fishes using plain English, I can probably code it in the app. The most challenging part is to find the knowledge itself! No web site on the net contains all the info I need and no single person knows all 800 species to this level of detail. Hence I am relying on users giving me feedback - especially the ones that say "AqAdvisor is wrong because.....". Then I can go and correct them. I can go on forever, but I think the best way is for you to ask me more specific questions if you have any. As I mentioned before, I am here to look for feedbacks. Constructive criticisms are great too! I am especially interested in hearing AqAdvisor reporting "wrong" results - those are relatively easy to fix.