About
A desk reference, not a store.
FishBaseHQ exists because the shop will sell you a 10-gallon kit, a common pleco, and a smile, and none of those three things belong together. This site is the lookup you do on the sidewalk: fish profiles, whether they can live together, and the arithmetic for gallons, filters, heaters, and water changes.
There is no shop and no product grid. If a number matters — GPH, watts, bags, milliliters — the formula is on the same page as the input.
What this is
- A fish database with temperature, pH, tank size, diet, and temperament for common freshwater livestock.
- Compatibility — including a betta checker, a shrimp list, and an aggressive-fish page that does not pretend oscars are community fish.
- Calculators for volume, stocking, heaters, filters, substrate, lighting, CO₂, and water-change doses.
- Guides and a blog for the questions people actually type: 10-gallon stocking, cloudy water, fish that do not need heaters.
What this is not
- Not FishBase.org, the scientific species database. Different project, different job.
- Not a shop. We do not warehouse filters. We tell you the spec.
- Not saltwater or garden ponds. The saltwater page says so instead of inventing a marine catalog.
- Not a diagnosis from a blurry photo. If fish are gasping, test ammonia and read the gasping note.
Opinions we will not walk back
- A 20 long beats a 10-gallon kit for almost every first community.
- Cycle first. Clear water is not a cycle.
- Liquid tests beat strips for ammonia and nitrite.
- Common plecos do not stay four inches.
- Inch-per-gallon is a meme. Waste and filtration are not.
Suggest something
Missing a fish, a tool, or a number that looks wrong? Email [email protected]. We read it.