Howdy. I've been a member of the forum for a quite a while, but this is the first time I've really spent significant time browsing. Good stuff.

One glaring hole (in my view) is the lack of a "Live Foods" forum or subforum. There are certainly lots of posts on the topic, but looks like they're mostly just mixed in "Captive Care Discussion" (maybe a few in "Freshwater Invertebrates"? ) I'd consider discussion of what live foods are available, how to get them, how to raise them, etc. to be a pretty significant aspect of this hobby for many people. I'd imagine there are a number of us who actually spend more time dealing with live foods than our actual fish! At my last peak a year or so ago, I had blackworms, tubifex worms, white worms, red wiggler compost worms, mealworms, and scuds (gammarus) going!

Anyway, seems to me that this is enough of a distinct discussion topic that it deserves at least subforum status (within "Captive Care Discussion") or possible even a full-blown forum within Discussion. I'm pretty sure I'd be a regular poster there.

Discussions on live foods certainly happen in other "generalist" aquarium forums, but I'd assume that native fish keepers are among the biggest users/keepers of live foods, since so many of our fish *require* them.

What do you say?

-Jase

Edited by jase, 22 February 2008 - 01:23 AM.

I agree.
Also, as native fish keepers, most of us are in tune with collecting from the wild. I for one, and probably others of us, have been collecting live foods from the wild for years. This is totally counter to conventional wisdom in the main stream hobby but has worked for me consistently.
Watch for a thread from me in the near future on collecting some rather unusual live foods. I've been collecting photos for a few weeks now.

I doubt that we will implement a live foods sub-forum, but we could make a live foods topic pinned under the captive care sub forum. Jase, if you would like to write something up outlining some of your culturing techniques or what not, we could pin it. And in the future any live foods discussion could fall under this topic.

Howdy.

First, huge thanks to yourself, Drew and the other moderators for setting this up and the *hours* that must be spent administering it. Just wanted to throw out a way that I (and maybe others) would find useful to group some information. I certainly don't want to come across as offering anything other than constructive criticism about the way the forum is organized/run. I initially resisted the switch from the e-mail list to the forum pretty strongly, but I'm quickly coming around.

Not sure what the tradeoffs are for creating something as just a single topic rather than a forum/subforum?

How does the decision to create new forums/subforums/pinned topics get made, anyway? When I first joined the forum back in '06, I was really surprised to see all aspects of "Captive Care" grouped into one forum, while individual "Fish Groups" each get their own forum (and, indeed, a few of those have very few posts at all). I would have expected Captive Care to be subdivided more, for example: "Tank Setup and Equipment", "Breeding", "Live Foods", "Disease Identification/Prevention/Treatment", etc.

Anyway, I did a few searches for terms someone might use if looking for live foods information . Not sure how long links to searches will last, but here's a shot, including the strings I searched. Of course not all of these results are focused on live foods, but a lot of them are. Had to break it into 4 separate searches because of the 100 character max on searches.

earthworms "white worms" grindal blackworms tubifex "compost worms" "red wiggler"
http://forum.nanfa.o...rms red wiggler

"green water" "live food" "live foods" "vinegar eels" microworms
http://forum.nanfa.o...eels microworms

daphnia moina scuds gammarus "brine shrimp" maggots mealworms "mosquito larva" "mosquito larvae"
http://forum.nanfa.o...mosquito larvae

"feeder fish" "feeder guppies" "rosy red" "feeder goldfish" rotifers
http://forum.nanfa.o...ldfish rotifers

I get somewhere between 40 and 120 results for each search. Point is, there is a *lot* of discussion going on about issues related to culturing, collecting, and feeding live foods. There are so many different kinds of live foods that it seems like too much for any one topic.

And, yes, I'd love to contribute a few posts about the subject. By no means do I consider myself an expert, but I have good success with a few live food species.

Cheers,
Jase

P.S. Any ability to enable "tagging" on this forum? I've fallen in love with tags as a way to organize the same item in a number of different topics, rather than a strict hierarchy. Anyone who uses Gmail, del.icio.us, etc. should understand what I'm saying. That way I could tag something as "captive care", "live foods", AND "blackworms" without needing to care so much where in the forum/subforum hierarchy it lives.

Well, thank you!
Whether it is in a sub forum of its own, or a pinned topic, the search function will work the same. The benefit of a pinned topic is that hopefully people will see it, and post their pertinant posts within.
Currently we have a ton of subforums, and are not in too much of a hurry to add more. We do not want the board to be any more cluttered or any more difficult for us to manage at the current time.
We have noted your request, and if we feel comfortable with it at some point, we may consider it.
In reference to your other questions, I think Drew will have to answer.

I am really interested in anything you have learned about live food cultures. I am a food culture freak myself, to the point of being as interested in it as I am my fish.

Oh, BTW we need to get you a fish avatar. They eye is killing me.

One glaring hole (in my view) is the lack of a "Live Foods" forum or subforum.

In the beginning we wanted to do our best to make the forum easy to navigate in order to make the listserve transition easy. We also want to keep the front page as uncomplicated as possible. Many long time fish forum goers would agree that complicated/long front pages are quite irritating. This isn't to say as the forum grows, will will not have room for a live foods sub forum. The search function on this forum allows for precise searched subject matter. Look for the "more options" link after clicking the search function in the upper right. You can then click the "more options" tab in that window to find the most obscure references on the forum.

How does the decision to create new forums/subforums/pinned topics get made, anyway? When I first joined the forum back in '06, I was really surprised to see all aspects of "Captive Care" grouped into one forum, while individual "Fish Groups" each get their own forum (and, indeed, a few of those have very few posts at all). I would have expected Captive Care to be subdivided more, for example: "Tank Setup and Equipment", "Breeding", "Live Foods", "Disease Identification/Prevention/Treatment", etc.

The magic of the fish groups is simple. All aspect of the grouped fishes are to be contained there. If we separate breeding and captive care then we wind up with three sets of fish groups for people to search instead of one. If you want to post questions or methods about breeding Orangespotted sunfish, simply post in the "sunfish and basses" forum. This will also allow you easily search that particular forum for all references to breeding, feeding and tank design without having to search multiple forums for the answers. We thought about a disease section in the beginning but we would simply be rehashing information listed in complete detail on other forums and websites. Great information is to be found for treatment and identification of disease elsewhere. We felt we would not add a whole lot to existing treatment and ID of disease. Once again as the forum grows, new forums might be added.

In the beginning we wanted to do our best to make the forum easy to navigate in order to make the listserve transition easy. We also want to keep the front page as uncomplicated as possible. Many long time fish forum goers would agree that complicated/long front pages are quite irritating. This isn't to say as the forum grows, will will not have room for a live foods sub forum. The search function on this forum allows for precise searched subject matter. Look for the "more options" link after clicking the search function in the upper right. You can then click the "more options" tab in that window to find the most obscure references on the forum.
The magic of the fish groups is simple. All aspect of the grouped fishes are to be contained there. If we separate breeding and captive care then we wind up with three sets of fish groups for people to search instead of one. If you want to post questions or methods about breeding Orangespotted sunfish, simply post in the "sunfish and basses" forum. This will also allow you easily search that particular forum for all references to breeding, feeding and tank design without having to search multiple forums for the answers. We thought about a disease section in the beginning but we would simply be rehashing information listed in complete detail on other forums and websites. Great information is to be found for treatment and identification of disease elsewhere. We felt we would not add a whole lot to existing treatment and ID of disease. Once again as the forum grows, new forums might be added.

I know I am new here and not a member yet(I will be soon).

I have run and been part of forums that have been as big as 5000+ members, I have also run forums that are smaller like this. I understand the cost of running a forum and I understand the time involved in running a forum.

Please see this as just my input and not that I am trying to tell you how to run the forum.

Forum after forum I see admins say how they don't want to add a topic even if the members ask over and over due to the fact that if we add it we will have to moderate it and we don't want to clutter the main page.

Looking at the main page it would not look any more cluttered if you added LIVE FOODS to Other Related Discussion, there is already 37 topics on the main page how big a difference is one more really going to make. Actually if you have a dedicated topic it is easier to police because if the topic does not belong it will stick out like a sore thumb.

My biggest issue with a sticky is that you get a bunch of different topics in one thread and it can get confusing. This goes back to the guys on the mailing list that say it is too complicated to read the forum. If they can go to the topic they are interested in without searching and wading through stuff they are not looking for, maybe they will come over here.

Hi,

Just to clarify, I posted search phrases and results to demonstrate that there's a lot of discussion on the topic of live foods, and that it currently requires searching with a *ton* of different phrases to find them all. That seems like quite a disadvantage for someone just getting into the hobby who wouldn't know live food species to search for. I understand that search is still available regardless of how the topic is organized (forum vs. thread), but organizing as a forum allows browsing a cohesive group of related information in a way not possible now just using search.

Again, I'm very new to the forum as an active user, so I'm not clear on all all the implications of creating a discussion as just a pinned thread rather than a subforum. My initial reaction is that this area is too broad to fit into a single thread. I'd envision it more as a subforum of live foods in general where threads would pop up on the dozens of different species used, culturing techniques, collecting techniques, etc. Having all that in a single thread would prevent that kind of subdivision, forcing people to revert to search to find that kind of info.

Are there disadvantages to creating more subforums other than complexity? More work to administer/moderate the forum somehow? In terms of reducing the front page complexity (I agree, for someone coming from the e-mail list it seems too fragmented already), would it potentially make sense to group all "Fish Groups" together under one top-level forum, as is done with the states under "State Regulations & Laws w/ Forms & Permits"?

In any case, I'll be happy to write something up about my experience with live foods. I'd love to be able to do it as separate topics on each species I've had success with (wink, wink), but whatever makes most sense for the forum administrators/moderators is clearly fine. At some future point I might be interested in helping with moderation efforts, but I don't want to commit to something right now that I may not have time to adequately fulfill.

Cheers, Jase

P.S. I'm leaving for a week in Costa Rica tomorrow, so won't be posting any follow-up here until at least the first week of March.

I am really interested in anything you have learned about live food cultures. I am a food culture freak myself, to the point of being as interested in it as I am my fish.

Me too. Sometimes I feel almost as though I'm keeping the fish just as a justification for culturing lots of neat worms and other critters. Of my current 35 fish, 31 are gambusia destined as feeders. I probably have something on the order of 5-10,000 mealworms growing as potential food for 2 largish bullheads and a pumpkinseed (awesome and incredibly easy live food source for large fish, in my experience.)

Oh, BTW we need to get you a fish avatar. They eye is killing me.

That's not just any eye, that's *my* eye. Yeah, maybe I'll get something fishy in the near future.

The magic of the fish groups is simple. All aspect of the grouped fishes are to be contained there. If we separate breeding and captive care then we wind up with three sets of fish groups for people to search instead of one. If you want to post questions or methods about breeding Orangespotted sunfish, simply post in the "sunfish and basses" forum. This will also allow you easily search that particular forum for all references to breeding, feeding and tank design without having to search multiple forums for the answers.

Forgot to add this to my previous post. As I noted in an earlier message, "tagging" (with a pre-populated list of category names, not free-form) is the best way I've seen of indicating that a single post/thread deals with multiple distinct topics. Thus if a thread about breeding Orangespotted sunfish evolves into a discussion about what live foods to feed them condition them and how to raise those foods (a natural progression), then the thread or individual posts could be tagged as "orangespotted sunfish", "breeding", and "live foods" so that they would show up in multiple categories. This might not be possible in this forum software, but it's clearly a trend that's increasing on the web. The strictly hierarchical way of organizing information is going away as ubiquitous databases make it possible to organize the same piece of information as belonging to several or many categories. Again, Gmail is my favorite example. Searching uses keywords to guess that a post *might* be about the topic you're looking for, or it might just mention it in passing. Tagging means that a person has specifically indicated topics that are covered -- it can mean a pretty big difference in terms of signal to noise ratio of results.