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Seriously Fish

Myrtle

Myrtle

Member
Joined
21 Aug 2008
Messages
830
Location
Basingstoke
Not sure where to post this, or if it's even appropriate to post, but is anyone ese having trouble using the advanced search on the SF site? I'd ask on their forum but it's pretty inactive now. I seem to get several pages of results but I can never get past the first page.
 
Myrtle said:
Not sure where to post this, or if it's even appropriate to post, but is anyone ese having trouble using the advanced search on the SF site? I'd ask on their forum but it's pretty inactive now. I seem to get several pages of results but I can never get past the first page.
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Good spot, never noticed that before.

You need @castle - he has a way to download data from the Seriously Fish database into a spreadsheet, which may allow you to sort by the variable you are trying to search on (such as locality).

Example here: Coldwater nano fish
 
As a hobby project I’m building “seriouslyfish.search” but it ground to a hault as the data on seriouslyfish is lacking in a lot of places, still my go to website for fish info tho.

I’ve offered to buy seriouslyfish, but no response from owner 😔 I’ll try again.
 
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I downloaded all of the pages on seriouslyfish, slowly. Then stored them as HTML, i then parsed this extracting the data I wanted via some rule based logic and NLP. This was then stored in more files, until it turned into a database I have on my laptop 😬
 
Judging by the almost total spam content of their forum now, and lack of anything new in the last few years, I'm guessing either the owner is unable to access it themselves for some reason or is otherwise indisposed. Still the best site for fish info but now limited by knowing roughly which fish you're searching for!
 
I've often wondered what the deal is with this site. The forum there is very odd indeed.
Is it a case of the site no longer being updated or added to? So that, one day, it'll become outdated due to discoveries over the last several years not being covered?
 
Owner definitely still has access, but the forum is dead. However it’s not down as it still provides passive income.

As said, I’ll reach out again. All I’d do is make it more stable, improve search, make the content peer reviewable. Write a script that duplicates all the content onto Wikipedia. Update the styling too.
 
castle said:
Owner definitely still has access, but the forum is dead. However it’s not down as it still provides passive income.

As said, I’ll reach out again. All I’d do is make it more stable, improve search, make the content peer reviewable. Write a script that duplicates all the content onto Wikipedia. Update the styling too.
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Good luck, it's definitely worth persevering with as it does risk being lost due to lack of updates as @Buggy says, which would be very sad indeed.
 
We have a datbase feature in UKAPS, maybe if someone can get in contact with the owners of the site, i would be happy to import all the data into UKAPS! and make it searchable!
 
Don't forget the Google Advanced search feature.


In the 'Site or Domain' box add the domain name 'seriouslyfish.com' then it searches in the specified domain only.

Believe it or not, for the majority of websites google advanced with the domain specified gives me more and better hits than the search engine at the website. Why? Beats me, my best guess is Google offers much more search options uses a better algorithm in the queries and autocorrects spelling and grammar issues with alternative options. Most lesser-equipped search engines search the words in the query much too specifically.

Anyway give it a go(ogle) :)

An even simpler method learn the Google Tags in the query e.g

Puffer site:seriouslyfish.com

 
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Search imo is an issue, but seriouslyfish is excellent if you’re searching by Latin names, but that’s it. Generally, just use Google as zozo says!

While a nice idea @LondonDragon It doesn’t matter if you have a copy of the DB, it’s heterogeneous data. You cannot search it with any dependable accuracy 🤷‍♂️
 
castle said:
While a nice idea @LondonDragon It doesn’t matter if you have a copy of the DB, it’s heterogeneous data. You cannot search it with any dependable accuracy 🤷‍♂️
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Once it's on the system it becomes searcheable like everything else, can also categorise it like the plant database (that needs some work, need volunteers ;) )
 
Their search is against all columns, and from what I’m getting you’re proposed search would be the same 😬🤷‍♂️ a costly, fuzzy text match, it wouldn’t be precise. It’s not precise as the data is heterogeneous. Every field is varchar.

What this database needs is formatting, but there are a lot of fish.
 
Myrtle said:
what I found useful was the ability to search by tank footprint or temp range and I'm not sure if you can do that with the google advanced search...
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It is useful if it works of course... :)

But regarding Google, Yes you can, but then first look at how seriously fish describes such data for example it doesn't describe tank size or footprint 30x20x20. But it describes this data uniformly in every single article in the same standard as 'Aquarium dimensions 30cm x 20cm x 20cm' or any other standard aquarium sizes. The same goes for temperature data, 'Temperature: 72 – 82°F (22 – 28°C)' copy it as precisely as possible the same as the site does in its articles to narrow down the best results.

Making up your own words and terms might get more difficult in the results. But copy-paste does the trick. But you also need to do some home work reading the site and make a list of standard descriptions and ranges.

E.g

Footprint

Temperature

A mnomic to calculate between °F and °C

82°F - 32 / 1.8 = 28°C
28°C x 1.8 + 32 = 82°F
Not 100% but rounded to the closest full number
 
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I’ll try and get my lil hobby project up and running this month. If anything, it will allow you to search by tank size, ph, hardness, region and fish size.

Results not guaranteed.
 
zozo said:
It is useful if it works of course... :)

But regarding Google, Yes you can, but then first look at how seriously fish describes such data for example it doesn't describe tank size or footprint 30x20x20. But it describes this data uniformly in every single article in the same standard as 'Aquarium dimensions 30cm x 20cm x 20cm' or any other standard aquarium sizes. The same goes for temperature data, 'Temperature: 72 – 82°F (22 – 28°C)' copy it as precisely as possible the same as the site does in its articles to narrow down the best results.

Making up your own words and terms might get more difficult in the results. But copy-paste does the trick. But you also need to do some home work reading the site and make a list of standard descriptions and ranges.

E.g

Footprint

Temperature

A mnomic to calculate between °F and °C

82°F - 32 / 1.8 = 28°C
28°C x 1.8 + 32 = 82°F
Not 100% but rounded to the closest full number
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I think the SF search results used ti include everything up to the size searched for too, eg when searching for 45x45 it would include 30x30. Not sure if google can do that (or if I was imagining SF doing that anyway!)?
 
It's not quite for the hobbyist fish keeper, but it's a very good resource for scientific searches on the fish you may, or may not keep.
 
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castle said:
It's not quite for the hobbyist fish keeper, but it's a very good resource for scientific searches on the fish you may, or may not keep.
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Hi @castle

Fishbase is the de facto fish reference at my local fish club and is used by plenty of hobbyists, including myself.

JPC
 
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