PlanetCatfish.com

Hey for those of use who live only to make fun of others misfortunes here is a good one. I was happy today when I found TFH magazine (Tropical Fish Hobbyyist) as I am always wanting to hear the latest and greatest in study's. I read this magazine because it is less novice the AFM and the repetetive ammonia problem question.

This month I was speachless when I read on page 18 of Q&A when I saw "ADONIS PLECO". I read a little further to find out that this pleco comes from Brazil... maybe so and the fish I have been exporting are probably not even pleco's they are cypronids. HA... getting deeper into the funny reply I note that this pleco is fairly peacful and will only get about 10" so it needs a big tank.

Here is a prime example of the fish keepers 6".... or in metric terms 25cm or just short of a foot. Now that they only grow that big, are non agressive algea eaters do you think I should bring in a few boxes???

I read that last night also, I will take 4, seeing how they only get 4" I have a 55 gallon tank I can put them in.
Yes this is a joke.

Should somebody e-mail them? They show a photo in the magazine of a juvenile, with spots. It appears quite large in the photo. I would imagine people could get the impression that the photo is of an adult. The caption doesn't refer to age. I feel bad for the people who got the misinformation. I've seen a lot of these on-line recently.
Amanda

I did e-mail them. no response but I bet if enough people write them they might add a blurb in the editors column!

I thought about sending them a picture of my 13" one then said aww the heck with it. I wish I had a pic of the damage it did to a large rhino plec in one night. NON agressive my butt.

I sent a nice, friendly e-mail, with a link to the Cat-eLog. Oddly, Fishbase calls them out at 20 cms. Am I seeing things?

More then likely we'll see a blurb in the editor's area saying it was wrong. They messed up with a puffer article last fall I beleive. It was an article about how to identify and they stuck a picture of a puffer up that was incorrectly identified. A month or two later they came out with a small blurb. still funnie

TFH is famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) for using canned photos that are mis-identified and descriptions that are dated and ignorant of the current data.

However, as Waldo rightly says, its the only game in town on this side of the world for people past cycling questions, although I do read FAMA once in a while . . .

I just shook my head when I saw the faux pas, one of many times I have in 25 years of subscribing to TFH . . .

Dave

TFH is famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) for using canned photos that are mis-identified and descriptions that are dated and ignorant of the current data.

Just to be fair to TFH... Jools puts in hours pretty much every day keeping the Cat-eLog up to date. Now imagine TFH's archives of hundreds of thousands of actual prints, slides, and digital images going back 50 years and covering freshwater and marine fishes from every family plus freshwater and marine inverts and reptiles. They would need a small army of taxonomists to even attempt to keep it very current.
-Shane

It's far from something I would consider putting down my mags for, I would just expect the general Q&A to have broader knowledge of sp or gathering of specilists to cover such topics. Thats why when people ask me questions I generally point them to a forum specializing in that sort of fish. I am always happy to share but knowledge from one source is called ingorance.

Shane,

I was in the publishing business as an editor for many years, thus errors like that do bother me, as they are preventable.

A monthly magazine with the resources and deadlines of TFH should make dead sure the photos and text they publish in each issue are correct. There is no excuse for errors; everything they publish in the magazine should be checked and double-checked for accuracy before it goes to press. That's SOP in publishing. It isn't rocket science; Its just hard work.

What really bothers me is the person who buys a half-dozen adonis and puts them in a 55 because they read it in TFH. We may know better, but not everyone who keeps an aquarium does.

Dave