Can I Keep It? -- a catfish edition?

nmonks · Post by **nmonks** » 28 Jun 2005, 22:07

Folks,

This is by way of an introduction...

I have written a handful of little computer programs for aquarists, and among them is a program called "Can I Keep It?". It's essentially a compatability matrix, you press a name, and incompatible species are removed, and by repeating this you successively tick off species that won't work in the same tank.

http://homepage.mac.com/nmonks/software/software.html

Anyway, it's been quite popular. I was wondering if anyone would care to contribute a "catfish edition", either based entirely around catfish, or else half catfish and half popular community fish. I'm no expert on catfish, and would be more than happy to turn the source code over to anyone who'd like to do this. Otherwise, people could simply feed me the facts and I can program them into the scripts that make the application work.

If Planet Catfish wanted to stick a logo or a link to the web site into the application, that would be cool, and it might be a fun project.

Cheers,

Neale

PS. It is a FREE program, no strings attached, and although built on a Mac, there is a Windows version as well.

PPS. I'm really a brackish water sort of person, and only recently come across this site. Frankly, I am very impressed by the quality of this site -- kudos to all involved.

YouTube · Post by **Jools** » 01 Jul 2005, 12:44

Neale,

Well, it's use would have to be limited to around the top 25 (or maybe 50) catfish seen in stores. I take it this is a thick client app? What I would be interested in is an online version...

Jools

MatsP · Post by **MatsP** » 01 Jul 2005, 13:28

I had a quick look at this too.

I think the concept is interesting, and I think something like that would be fairly useful, but to be really practical it needs to have a better understanding of different criteria, and maybe also the size of the tank.

All the fish (of the ones I know at least) on the current list are "small" fish, in the range of 1-3".

With the current design, adding some 25 catfish to the current list of 3-4 (which are actually groups of catfish rather than individual species) would probably be manageable, and the list wouldn't overrung the screen-size of most peoples PC/Mac.

However, a more practical approach would be:
1. Have a pull-down-menu or similar to choose fish from.
2. A text-based [or other simple form] data-base of fish-data (so that it becomes easy to add new species).
3. Take into account the aquarium water conditions. This should include tank-size, salinity, hardness, pH.
4. Perhaps also take into account other tank conditions, such as furnishings, planting and lighting? A perfect match in water-quality would not necessarily mean that a Pleco will be happy in a well lit tank with no hiding spaces, whilst a rainbow-fish (for instance) couldn't care less if you have caves or not...
5. Take stocking into account, as well as number of fish for the considered group (i.e. suggest that you buy more than one Cardinal tetra for instance).
6. Give a score-based compatibility (10.0 -> perfect match with other fish in the tank, 7.0 -> acceptable conditions, but probably not good for breeding, 3.0 -> not compatible at all, 0.0 -> dead within minutes. And note that a single criteria could cause a 0.0 score, whilst all criteria must be a good match for a 10.0 score, so it's a (sort of, at least) multiplicative rather than additivie score).

This is obviously not as trivial as the application produced above, but it would help a whole lot more.

Also, on a web-based scenario, you'd obviously want to be able to save a tank-setup so that you can go back and "see what happens if I buy one of these to my Tank X". Multiple tanks should be supported.

I'm not taking anything from Neale, he's done a good job, not to mention a great idea, it's just that the way the application is implemented at the moment is fairly limited, and would be great for a small shop that has a limited amount of fish at any given time, but it's not quite as useful if you start looking at a dozen different (independent) shops list, you easily get a list of a few hundred different fish.

I wish I had more time to spend on hacking projects like this, instead of working on Linux/Xen kernel material...

--
Mats

nmonks · Post by **nmonks** » 01 Jul 2005, 19:28

Mats, Jools,

Thanks for the positive comments, and the ideas for general improvement.

Originally the program had 24 fish, then 48, and then a whole new version (with the original name of More Can I Keep It?) that has another 48 species.

http://homepage.mac.com/nmonks/software/software.html

Taken together, they fairly well cover the common stuff.

The main issue is the balance between accessibility and accuracy. Like most people on this forum, I have my own favourite books that I turn to. But I wrote this program specifically for a friend of mine who had created a community with ropefish, a red tailed shark, mollies, silver dollars, tiger barbs, and a dwarf gourami. In so many ways this was wrong. So I wanted something that even people like her -- who hate reading books or taking advice -- could quickly figure out some workable combinations.

Anyway, this isn't by way of a defence. The comments you've made here are valid. The trick is how to turn them into something small and easy to use, and without demanding days of my time. After all, I don't get anything out of this beyond good karma. Possibly dividing the main window into tabbed panels, and then creating one tabbed panel for catfish, another for barbs, and so on.

I like the idea of providing more "subtle" facts. I visualise adding check-boxes for things like schooling, requires caves, destroys plants, digs, and so on.

I have no knowledge of coding this sort of thing in HTML or JavaScript, so a web-based version isn't going to happen. At least, not by me! Sorry.

Cheers,

Neale

YouTube · Post by **Jools** » 14 Jul 2005, 20:07

What is it written in anyway?

Jools

nmonks · Post by **nmonks** » 14 Jul 2005, 22:35

Hi Jools,

It's written (if that's the word) in REALbasic.

http://realbasic.com/

I write the things on my Mac, and then compile them as Mac, Mac Classic, and Windows applications. In theory I could export as Linux versions as well, but I don't have a Linux machine to test said applications on.

Anyone else with REALbasic can open and explore the source code files without much problem, but not the actual compiled applications.

Cheers,

Neale

smithrc · Post by **smithrc** » 15 Jul 2005, 16:10

windows PC's dont like the ? on the exe file in the 'more' version...

Some handy little programs there

nmonks · Post by **nmonks** » 15 Jul 2005, 16:58

Good call. Thanks for letting me know. I've just renamed and updated the file accordingly.

http://homepage.mac.com/nmonks/software ... KI_win.zip

Cheers,

Neale