AqAdvisor is a livestock calculator adapted for aquarium use. It is a tool that can be used by both beginner aquarists and experienced alike. This website does provide small information about almost every fish species that you can add in a freshwater aquarium.
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How it works? What it does?
The main feature of AqAdvisor is to calculate your aquarium population and to help you manage it the proper way in order to ensure a healthy and good-looking aquarium. It provides a enormous list of aquarium fish species; there are almost 1000 species in their database right now and they are working on improving it every day.
They also let you chose your aquarium dimensions or they provide you with a list of premade aquariums from different brands that you can chose from (this list is not complete and it is mostly for people living in the United States, since some of the brands may not be available in Europe or Asia). By using the dimensions (length, width, height) the website passes them through a simple calculation algorithm that will determine the approximate volume of your tank. Are those calculations accurate? Yes, they are! The website does provide a correct approximation of the aquarium water volume using its dimensions as reference.
The fish database
AqAdvisor has an integrated fish database consisting of almost 1000 freshwater aquarium fish species. There is short information about each species, but for someone that is familiar or knows well the fish he is looking for, that won’t be a problem. In the eyes of a beginner however, the information provided is quite insufficient and it makes him go to other freshwater aquarium related sites for more information.
We think that by enhancing the amount of information given to the user, this site will be perfect. The small 2-3 phrases information is not quire relevant, why relate only to that when there are entire books written about a single fish species (take a look at Betas, Danios, Guppies). Shortage of information is quite a downside.
But is this website all about fish information? Of course not! AqAdvisor is more of a livestock calculator for your aquarium.
The calculation algorithm
AqAdvisor is a great site to use if you want to have an initial image of your aquarium even before you start building it. But you don’t have to stop or only use AqAdvisor. Use your imagination! You build something that you like, something that you will enjoy more and more as the time passes, something that you may even leave as a legacy.
AqAdvisor makes used of its freshwater fish database and all information related to fish that are available to it. It allows you to select how many fish you want in the tank, how many species, the sex ratio of the fish and so on. A great feature is that it tells you how many individuals of the same species can be added. We tested the website with a couple of species that we knew are pretty hard to keep in large numbers, for example we made a test aquarium using AqAdvisor of about 950 us gallons and we filled it with 50 Red Bellied Piranha. From the start the website gave us a warning that there were too many individuals of the same species and that they cant live together in a aquarium that is that small. Also what was very interesting was the fact that it gave accurate information on how many individuals can be kept, in the case of Red Bellied Piranha, it told us not to keep more than 2 individuals and also that 2 of them was more than enough since they are very aggressive fish.
Ease of use
On the first sight, AqAdvisor is a simple website (when talking about the visual experience), plain buttons and text boxes are spread across the main page. There are no striking visuals there, only a plain and simple HTML construction. The warning texts are delivered in a bold red color, making sure that you will not miss them.
When it comes to information and facts they are delivered with a pleasant to read font and written in a very good format.
There are no fuzzy scrips or any flash requiring addons on the website. It is simple and easy to use, and we like that about it. It also has a nice section about which fish was most popular in a certain month and it stretches for a couple of years. How is that information gathered? Simple! If there are a couple hundred users that use the website to build an aquarium in May, and all of them will chose to fill their aquariums with Guppies and Neons, the website will keep track of that choice and rank Guppies and Neons higher on the ladderboard for that month. Plain and simple, just like we like it.
Final thoughts on AqAdvisor
AqAdvisor does what its name says it does, it gives advice, in some manner to aquarium enthusiasts. The plain and simple interface of the website makes it very easy to be used and the tools provided are great. But AqAdvisor does not limit itself to freshwater aquariums only, it also has a marine saltwater tanks section that is similar to the freshwater one but it lacks in diversity and functionality (it doesn’t have the add/remove filter option and the fish species are limited only to a roughly 70 individuals, this thing can be improved).
What can make AqAdvisor even better? Maybe they should incorporate a section about aquatic plants. Plants play an important role in every aquarium and they should not be missed out, especially that there are species of fish that may not be compatible with certain plants (they may eat them like goldfish do or they may not like plants at all, like sand dweller cichlids).
But in the end, AqAdvisor is a great tool and it proves useful to beginner aquarists and even to experienced ones. We strongly recommend that you give it a try.