In November of 2024, I interviewed Craig Storms, a fellow cichlid enthusiast and proprietor of the new website, AquaristSpecies.net. Craig’s site has really taken off over the past year because more fish enthusiasts have joined. If you breed fish (intentionally or not) and haven’t joined, I encourage you to do so.
There are many great aspects about his site. In fact, the more people who join, the better the site is. While the site does provide some profile information on cichlids and other fish, it’s real value, in my opinion, lies in discovering who is keeping certain species and the networking potential for aquarists. Also, joining the site gets you access to the contact information of other site participants.
Fish profiles are easy to find online, but locating people who keep a fish you want to keep, or are currently keeping, is not. Furthermore, finding personal contact information online is often a struggle. This was one of the primary reasons Craig set up the site. It is one thing to read about someone’s experience keeping a particular species or to watch their video, but it’s entirely another to be able to contact them. Of course, there is no guarantee that any fellow fish keeper you contact will reply, but most will.
The site was recently migrated to a new server. Coming soon are several additions and improvements, including the below, which are either in testing or planned:
- Support for Club Membership – any user may be a member of one or more clubs, sorting out how to manage who is a club member and who is not.
- CARES Shared Species Maintenance – 2 or more aquarists collaborate to maintain a species across multiple fish rooms.
- Aquarist Species Log – more detailed notes, pictures, spawn tracking … for those who want to keep and optionally share details about their aquarist species.
- More Photos – 2 photos for Male/Female where sexual dimorphism is striking, ‘Have Spawned’ photo, and more in the species logs feature.
If you have any questions about the site or want to provide feedback, reach out via the site feedback form.