How the catalog is built

Scientific names for fish follow Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes, the reference ichthyologists use, and we adopt its revisions rather than the older names other databases still carry. Corals and marine invertebrates follow the World Register of Marine Species. Plants are listed under the name the hobby sells them by, with the botanical name where one is settled.

The common name on a guide is the one most keepers use. The “also known as” line comes from what shops actually call the animal, not from a taxonomy database, so a name you saw on a price tag finds the right page. A name that belongs to a different species is not added as an alias, and where the trade sells several fish under one name, the guides for the ones most often confused say so.

A colour form or fin type is a variety, not a species: it gets its own page under the species it belongs to, and the catalog counts species and varieties separately.

Tank size, temperature, pH, adult size and temperament were compiled from published aquarium references and are checked in audits that compare them against the literature and against what breeders and shops publish. Corrections are recorded changes, never silent edits.

Adult size is a planning value, not a record: the size an aquarist should realistically make room for, with the exceptional wild maximum mentioned in the text when the two differ.

Tank mates, the common questions under each guide and the figures on category pages are computed from the stored data at build time, not written by hand, so they cannot drift from the numbers on the page.

Names change, ranges get refined, and a guide can carry a mistake. If you spot one, tell us through the contact page and we will check it against the sources above and fix the row.