Which Tank And Fish Are Right For Your Aquarium

by Jeanine Hughes

Fish make excellent pets. You don't have to have any special skills for them. You need only have the right fish and equipment, and then give them the right care. As a dry spectator to their watery world, you can actually lower your stress levels - their bright colors and graceful movements have a calming effect. You can enjoy them if you have very little space, or if you haven't time for more demanding pets.

There are two types of aquariums: fresh water and salt water. Because fresh water aquariums are much easier to maintain than salt water tanks, creating a tropical fresh water fish community is the...

SORRY... thanks to an alert reader this article has been pulled from our website.  It turns out to have been a scam!  Read more...

Dear NH,

Hi - just took a look through the February newsletter, and I saw this blurb:

"IS THERE AN AQUARIUM IN YOUR FUTURE?" If so, you might be interested in this fun article by Jeanine Hughes on choosing a tank and its occupants for your own “fish tale”."

Following the link to the story I see that it's got quite a few problems...you might want to contact that author and have them update the article. Problems being anything from a Genus name being mis-spelled, to lack of correct information. Things like this always catch my eye - I spent seven and a half years working with animals, specializing in reptiles and amphibians, also fish. Both retail and wholesale, and habitat design. If people depend on that article, I'd expect some disappointing feedback. Besides, I like animals and would rather not have them go through something like that, if it's avoidable. Way too much mortality in the pet trade as it is anyway.

If you have any questions, or would like to forward this to the author, feel free to do so.

Regards,

GT from Vista, CA

Dear GT,

Thanks for sharing your obvious expertise. There is a new type of virus going around, but it only affects websites so you probably haven’t heard of it. I have named it the "term paper virus". As you might imagine, I get requests to publish do-it-yourself articles every day. Within the last year, the number has skyrocketed to the point that I knew something was amiss. Most of the articles, you see, have nothing to do with home repair whatsoever. I get articles on travel, money, hair styling, keeping children safe, sports... so many that I pulled our newsletter from a couple of ezine libraries that I had indications were providing my address to these article mills.

Even the names of the authors seemed odd. Just today, for example, I received articles from Pendio Chussig, Liz Studebaker, Seena Fichen, Vol Brastoff, Gocchi Pionn and (my personal favorite) Mary Anaheime! I figured anyone who tries to get articles posted must have their name somewhere on the web. So the articles poured in, I did a web search for the authors. Not surprisingly, it turns out most of the names are totally made up!

Okay, we have websites trying to get traffic by burying webmasters with articles and praying to get published. But even with this knowledge, the nagging question was, “Who is writing all these darn articles?” This seemed like too much of a scam for these folks to be paying people for them. Oddly, there was a familiarity in the style that bothered me. It’s as if they were written by someone who didn’t know much about the subject… maybe didn’t even want to write it in the first place. Suddenly the little light in my head went on… they must be high school or college level creative writing! With three high school grads, I’ve seen enough non-motivated papers to last a lifetime! Perhaps they are even from one of those rent-a-report services where students can purchase articles on most any topic.

So it seems that the scam is to flood website and newsletter publishers with articles cheap or free articles on every conceivable topic. Like with viruses, it’s all in the numbers. Eventually an article of interest, such as the fish article, will meet the correct website and get published.

I attempted to contact the author numerous times but, not surprisingly, the email address is a “black hole” from which nothing exits. So I’ve pulled the article and, armed with this new knowledge, will not get “scammed” again!

NH