My Cats for species not yet ID'd?

[L number Banana]

Hi,
What do you think about having a way to include all those un-ID'd cats in our my cats profile?
Like "Unidentified Farlowella 1"
This would be good for Twigs, Otos and some of the larger common plecos and little brown guys.

[Jools]

It wouldn't work technically. You've got to hang a "My Cats" entry off something. Anyway, it wouldn't meet the main objective of my cats which is to show how many folks are keeping one species and what their experiences are.

Jools

[Shane]

Jools would have to add to the Cat-eLog the "Page of the Unknown Catfish."

-Shane

[MatsP]

If you can convince Jools or someone else with enough privileges[1] that it is definitely none of the existing species in the Cat-eLog [a thread in "What's my catfish" with an authoritative[2] answer of "This is probably a new species" would be a decent "convincer" (sounds like what a gangster would call a baseball bat , as would an e-mail copy from a relevant scientist/specialist that isn't member of Planet Catfish], then I'd say a new species in the Cat-eLog can be added - even if it's not known what the species is.

However, for fish that are "just barely out of the normal", I'd say it's probably best to just treat them as individual variations and list it under whatever you think it may be, and add a comment to say "Not sure about the ID". You can always move it to another species later on.

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Mats

[L number Banana]

I wasn't looking for a "new species" type thing. I meant unidentified, not undescribed!
It's more like: "I have an oto but I can't tell which one it is and either can anyone else on PC"
Some species seem to never get ID'd because the common ones look so much the same when they're young. I guess i was just looking for more accuracy in my profile.

No matter, hardly the end of the world

[MatsP]

In the case of "this will never be identified because there are several that are very similar", I take the approach of sign it up as "the most likely one" (e.g. the most common variety if you have no other clues) - if later on you find that it's wrong, add the corrected species and transfer the dates etc to the new entry.

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Mats

[L number Banana]

Done. Thanks Mats.

[Jools]

OK, now I understand more the "problem", the solution seems to me to be add the facility to transfer the data from a species entry to another species entry. Or, rather better, "rename" a my cats species so that you can record it as the most likely candidate initially and then at a latter date be able to say it's another species.

Make sense?

Jools

[MatsP]

Jools, I was thinking about that too - a "rename" would be great for those hard to identify cases where you only have guessed what they are.

I think it's fairly rare tho', and I'd say a manual transfer is feasible as a "for now" solution. But definitely a good feature.

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Mats

[Martin S]

When I first started adding fish to My Cats, I'd just add fish as what I thought they were, then find out I got it wrong , delete the original wrong entry and re-create it using the same start date. I soon realised it's better to be patient and hold back a bit until being sure about ID before adding it in. I have to agree though that the ability to transfer a species would be a useful tool, especially where, say, for example, you want to add a juvenile fish that looks like A, and then when it has grown and new pictures confirm the ID as something different, say B, rather than delete and re-create, to transfer it from species A to species B would be ideal, though not sure how difficult this would be to program and guess a layout to the My Cats screen would be needed?
Martin

[MatsP]

I don't think the actual change to the database tables is difficult to achieve (the SQL would look something like "set species_id = new_id where my_cats_id = current_my_cats_id in my_cats_table" [those table and field names are entirely made from my imagination, so the actual names are highly likely to be completely different]) and there is already code to "find a species" in other places of Cat-eLog maintenance. The layout change would involve adding a button to "change the species" (whatever we call it - "rename" doesn't seem quite right, and "change the species" doesn't seem much better), that leads to a new page that looks similar to the starting page for "add image admin page":

Of course, armchair programming is not the same as actually doing it, as I'm sure you are aware - similar to "manager programming" ;)

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Mats

[Martin S]

I don't think the actual change to the database tables is difficult to achieve (the SQL would look something like "set species_id = new_id where my_cats_id = current_my_cats_id in my_cats_table" [those table and field names are entirely made from my imagination, so the actual names are highly likely to be completely different]) and there is already code to "find a species" in other places of Cat-eLog maintenance. The layout change would involve adding a button to "change the species" (whatever we call it - "rename" doesn't seem quite right, and "change the species" doesn't seem much better), that leads to a new page that looks similar to the starting page for "add image admin page":

screenshot1.JPG

It did seem that way to me too, but as you said...

Of course, armchair programming is not the same as actually doing it, as I'm sure you are aware - similar to "manager programming" ;)

Indeed
Martin

[Carp37]

Jools, I was thinking about that too - a "rename" would be great for those hard to identify cases where you only have guessed what they are.

I've got one of these in my profile- I've got Corydoras pestai listed (based on Ian Fuller's i.d. two years ago) which Ian has now decided against- it's on this thread (posted by Mats last month) to merge/migrate some of the pestai stuff across to CW044. I didn't know whether to manually change the fish in My Cats or whether it would be transferred across automatically...

[L number Banana]

Lots of good ideas there but more in depth than my initial idea. I don't mind the manual part of deleting one species and assigning another, as long as I remember to note the original date for 'started keeping'. So far I've forgotten to note it every time...a 'reassign fish' feature would help with that little problem.

It might be easier to go over what I would like to be able to do, I think the process could be simple and the fish wouldn't need a separate species page. (Simpler? I'm not a programmer so I don't really know)

Say I bought a cory and couldn't match it to any of the species listed. I could go to the main cory species page and for the last entry there would be a line drawing for the image and the words, "Corydoras unconfirmed ID" and an 'add this species to My cats' link. No species page, no info.

It could be even more bland than that if you wanted to give just the genus or family and use the line drawings that are already on those pages. That way, a keeper could acknowledge that they have the fish and that it's a certain type. There a really only a few that have serious ID issues. Some of the more experienced members may never use this feature but for newbies, we make a big deal of every fish and want to list it somewhere to make it official

[Jools]

There are over 200 genera in the catelog - are you suggesting I add an unidentified species entry for each one? How many posts in the "what is my catfish" forum have resulted in a "I don't know"?

For me, I just see a fair bit of work for very little gain here...

Jools

[L number Banana]

Jools:

There are over 200 genera in the catelog - are you suggesting I add an unidentified species entry for each one?

And yes you're right, I guess that is what I was suggesting though you put it much better than I did and it would be a lot of work. Even 37 families would be a ton of work Even if it was for those families that often end in no ID, otos even.

How many posts in the "what is my catfish" forum have resulted in a "I don't know"?

Hmm, I don't know but lots.

Okay bad idea.Needs a new angle/solution.

Can anyone find a way to make ONE link that shows some kind of fish that you can't ID but is not lumped in with a potentially or definitely incorrect species? If there's a way to do this easily, I'm sure someone here will come up with it
Maybe I could just lump them all into my signature and take them off as the ID is confirmed? That way the experience with the type of fish is not ignored but not represented incorrectly either.

Okay here's something that just came to mind with your earlier question of how many cats result in 'I don't know'. Could we separate the ID'd fish off to some place and leave all the unconfirmed fish in the main "What's my Catfish" forum? That would be a load of work too but it's an idea for the future maybe.

Not the end of the world if there's no easy solution but thanks for looking at the problem, that's all that matters.

[Jools]

Do we really not identify "lots" of cats posted in "what is my cats"? I've looked at twenty entries at random and they are all ID'ed with reasonable conviction. So, we're looking at less than 5% if not more, no? That's not lots...

However, I think I see the other angle, what you're asking for is for an entry in my cats that ISN'T linked to a species in the catelog. It might be linked to a genus, or just a family and you _might_ also want to link it to the forum post in which it is trying to be identified.

I'm afraid I'd have to put this in the very nice to have category in terms of things to enhance the site with.

Jools

[MatsP]

I think there are some fishes that are more likely to become unidentified than others:
- Hypoptomatinae (otos, etc)
- Loricarinae (Sturisoma, Rinloricaria, Farlowella)
- Hypostomus
- Ancistrus
- Brown Vermiculated Hypancistrus species (H. debilittera & Co.)

I'm sure there are others (including species outside of Loricariidae).

The reason for these being hard to ID is that they often do not come with good collection information, and there are many similar looking species that are very difficult to identify without killing the fish (and knowing exactly what to look for).

Now, it just so happens that L-number Banana keeps a few of the above listed species. Which probably skews the statistics a bit.

I do agree that in general, the "What's my catfish?" does resolve the ID down to a reasonably confident species ID.

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Mats

[L number Banana]

I think you two both summed it up beautifully!
I see 'lots' of cats not ID's because I mainly look at the ones that I have which tend to fall into the tough-to-ID categories. Good call.

Off all my Farlowella only two were ID'd with confidence from several of our trusted ID people. And one oto, the rest I just used Mike_Noren's site and winged it. It's just my particular fish but since they're common fish I thought maybe some of the other newbies could use it.

I think sometimes I'm trying to find an easy way out because I hate to put some of these fish on the What is My Catfish forum knowing that the experts might be thinking," Oh #$%#, another x-fish " People are busy enough without having to waste their time on a fish ID that's near impossible but on the other hand I don't want to just ignore the fish. Especially with Farlowella because the behaviour is different so maybe I'm missing something else that I should be doing differently? If I could pinpoint the habitat that certain fish come from, I would know what I need to provide for them. Two eat shrimp pellets and any 'meat' more that algae, 3 NEVER eat off the glass but only on live plants and one spends most of it's time on the wood. Am I giving them what they need? See what I mean?

I like the idea of hooking the ID thread to a fish though. Someday when Jools is 70 and bored, that would be perfect!

[Birger]

People are busy enough without having to waste their time on a fish ID that's near impossible

Ahh but those are the fun ones!! Makes one dive into the books.

[L number Banana]

People are busy enough without having to waste their time on a fish ID that's near impossible

Birger wrote:

Ahh but those are the fun ones!! Makes one dive into the books.

Hmm. I did just buy three new Twigs.....
Fin-Addict...

[MatsP]

Change ID is "there", but doesn't actually work. I will look into it...

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Mats

[Jools]

Yes, I shelved development on it until I got my breeders up and running. Now that's online in its initial stage, we've can go back to this.

That is, once I get the version control environment Mats and I use into day-to-day working operation.

Jools

[MatsP]

I'm sure I just moved to "resolved" a post about this working.

Edit: Here is:
http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... 17&t=33165

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Mats