My Cats Editing

[Marc van Arc]

Hi Jools,
How do I tell the system when I stopped keeping a certain species? Pls see My Cats page (MvA), species: Ageneiosus magoi.
Or am I too soon and will you add an end date box?

Btw: is the complete date obligatory or will just the year do? I can imagine people who've kept spp. a long time ago don't remember the month, let alone the day.
At least, I don't
One could write in the comment how long a species has been kept.

[Bas Pels]

I can imagine people who've kept spp. a long time ago don't remember the month, let alone the day.

In my eyes, only one way to mend this works: all my species have their own word file, in which I write when I got them from who (or where if I got them on an exhibition or so). I also write down what happens (growth rate, fry, deseases and so on) and try to write down the tank they are in. Deads are also noted. I further have a file (excel) where I have the fishes in their current tanks

This system is very valuable for me, as I have over 500 fishes, 29 tanks, and a lot of species in more than 1 variety (3 varieties of Uruguayan Ancistrus, 4 varieties of convicts, 5 varieties of X helleri for instance)

Thus I can easily tell when I got a certain fish, evcen if it is 10 years back. Examnple, I got my old gibbceps on 29 December 1992,. My memory says I got it earlier, well before my Platydoras which I got on 20 February 1991 (2) and 4 September 1992 (1).

I trust this system better tham my memory (expecially because the information is on paper - until late 2003)

[sidguppy]

amazing.

I'll admit rightaway that keeping track of fishspecies like this in a proper way is very useful, but I simply flat out refuse to do so.
that's because I really like fishkeeping and I really hate bookkeeping. I love fish, I hate numbers. simple.

since my fishes are a hobby, not a job, I try to keep doing things I hate at a bare minimum or even below that. I might loose a lot of data that way, but well....

I DO remembver a LOAD of details about fishkeeping and I still remember almost every catfishspecies I've kept, where it went OK, wich ones bred and how I got them doing so, where it went wrong and how I screwed up on occasion.
but for the love of god I couldn't remember wich year had wich fish, even if you shipped me off to Gitmo to be waterboarded.

[Jools]

Or am I too soon and will you add an end date box?

Yup, it's on my list! Work has been very busy this week I was working in Shetland and in London next week.

Btw: is the complete date obligatory or will just the year do?

If you are not sure, just use 2001/01/01 (sometime in 2001) or 2002/09/01 (sometime in September 2002).

The other stuff will come...

Jools

[Jools]

In my eyes, only one way to mend this works: all my species have their own word file, in which I write when I got them from who (or where if I got them on an exhibition or so).

That's OK and a really good start, but what if you want to find all the fish you bought from one retailer on in one year? Then you have to look through lots of word files or pieces of paper.

I know this, as I used to do the same thing before I started Planet Catfish (I then had no time)! Since then I've been meaning to create a way to replicate the old spreadsheets and WP files I used 11 years ago.

When My Cats is complete you'll be able to do this and the one BIG other thing - share that information with the world.

Jools

[Bas Pels]

Jools, your example has not happened, but you are right: I can only get information back the way I put it in.

Once I had a few hybrids in a litter, and trying to find out what had happened, I was looking thtrough my notes for an hour - not unpleasant though.

[Jools]

One could write in the comment how long a species has been kept.

Then I can't do all sorts of computations like show longest kept fish etc. I have added a stop date as planned.

Jools

[Marc van Arc]

Jools,
Could you inform us when it's working as it should? I'll stop adding data until then, because I'm making a mess of it (not being able to edit).
At first I was only changing the necessary fields, but with the Cat-eLog Data Sheets in mind I thought I'd better change the whole My Cats Sheet. Alas, that doesn't work either (yet).
I'll just wait for your approval.

[Jools]

Marc,

All the fields now work in the sense that they store the data in the database and will allow you to edit it. Next I'm going to work on the number of days thing.

I am however waiting a little while to see what people edit into the pages before showing it on the catelog pages.

Jools