Planet Catfish Announcement: April 28th 2007

[Jools]

All~

I?ve not sent out a Planet Catfish announcement message since January, that?s my fault, but don?t think it?s because not much has been happening. If anything, it?s the stream of things that have been happening that have kept me from announcing them!

So, this announcement is something of a digest of January through to April. What have we been up to?

There have been several book reviews added for both catfish and general book reviews. The link below shows the latest ones.

In February, Chris Ralph supplied a catfish of the month (CotM) describing the smallish and rarely seen Cory, Corydoras cochui. March?s CotM slot was provided for by Marc Stabel and describes the interesting Fisher?s Woodcat. Marc is a real woodcat enthusiast and his CotM followed his visit to the UK where we managed to get to see some woodcats in UK stores.

April?s Cotm saw a first in that it featured a species of catfish (Pseudolaguvia foveolata) being presented almost exactly three years after its original discovery. I tagged along with the group who found it. It was subsequently described by Heok Hee Ng, who then wrote the April CotM article. It?s just started turning up in ornamental fish imports too. April further saw Antti Vuorela?s excellent article documenting the whole trip to India where many catfishes were found ? I?ve just finished editing and adding pictures to this good sized article. It?s a pretty good read I think!

In terms of more technical developments, the big one is the continued development of the ?my cats? feature. Phase 1 is complete. This allows the user to record that they are keeping a species and there are several pages to show who is keeping what, what species are commonly kept and, the most important one, is to allow you the keeper to see which other site uses are keeping the fish. At the time of writing there are 207 registered keepers! We?re in the middle of phase 2 which allows you to record your own notes about the species, when you started (and stopped) keeping them and how many you are keeping. Work continues steadily, watch out for more announcements as there is a lot of functionality planned.

I also added a feature to the contributor pages where you can now sort the images contributors has supplied, by taxon, date added to the cat-elog or indeed popularity (based on number of hits).

Jools

Links:

Latest Book Reviews
http://www.planetcatfish.com/books/inde ... ode=latest

Corydoras cochui CotM (Febraury)
http://www.planetcatfish.com/cotm/cotm. ... cle_id=122

Trachelyopterus fisheri CotM (March)
http://www.planetcatfish.com/cotm/cotm. ... cle_id=130

Pseudolaguvia foveolata CotM (April)
http://www.planetcatfish.com/cotm/cotm. ... cle_id=136

Exploring West Bengal for aquarium fishes
http://www.planetcatfish.com/shanesworl ... cle_id=141

What are the fish people are keeping?
http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/my ... sk=keepers