FishloreReviews of fishlore.com

I was a member of this forum for about 3 years. I visited nearly every day, multiple times a day, and quite honestly lived and breathed fishlore. I started on this site with limited knowledge in the hobby and grew over the years to trying to help others and return the favor as much as I possibly could. Then one day, I was banned. I received no warning. It seems my only crime was being active in a different fish forum's chat room at the same time as others that were banned. Before anyone claims poaching or anything else, I never once encouraged anyone to leave fishlore or even encourage anyone to join another site. I didn't even mention another site while on fishlore unless pointing users to better information on another forum (which I got approved by FL mods). Others contacted me about it but I never reciprocated or messaged anyone with the attempt to have anyone join any other sites or leave fishlore. I followed every rule in the bylaws that were posted at the time. But nonetheless, after devoting several hundreds of hours into helping hobbyists and learning myself, I was banned. Now that I've had time to step away and be a more active member of other fish forums, I will say that fishlore may be one of the worst sources of information one can choose. The influx of new people to the hobby, is quite encouraging but unfortunately, many folks on fishlore give faulty or down right bad advice. I believe that members are helping other members by simply regurgitating other advice they have seen previously on the forum. This happens with any forum quite honestly but the ratio of experienced fish keepers to novices is quite a bit more skewed on fishlore than any forum I've ever been a member of. There simply is not enough experienced fish keepers on that forum to give good advice and to combat the bad. So bad advice is given and recirculated ad nauseam until the faulty advice is considered fact and golden. I realized this about the time I was banned from fishlore when I started joining other forums. Fish keepers with decades of experience were telling me almost the opposite of the guidance that is just accepted as fact on fishlore. There are some wonderful people on fishlore. People I miss very much that are knowledgable, give great advice, and don't make you feel dumb when asking what might be a dumb question. But they are quite honestly outnumbered by rude, novice, members who are a detriment to the forum. Which brings me to another issue. Some of the mods that have been around for a while can be quite overbearing. Some of the mods are quite nice and pleasant but some quite simply are a detriment to the forum. They are very quick to correct someone for slighting the forum in any way or questioning their methods, but do very little to curb the terrible and wrong advice that is spread throughout their forum. It can be quite difficult to keep the experienced fish keepers around when they are continuously banning them for sharing their knowledge on other forums, or daring to question the mods fish knowledge themselves. The forum may get nothing from banning members but far too often I've seen the mods let things get personal and punish members for personal reasons. Some mods, quite simply, put themselves before the forum. Always, always, always check any advice you get from FL against other forums if you decide to visit. There are other, better, more educated forums out there when it comes to fish keeping.

Literally did absolutely nothing wrong on the site and was banned. The only thing I was doing at the time was chatting on another fish forum chat. I never messaged anyone about the other forum. I was even actively posting in a topic I had made on FL that was getting activity when it happened. I made a point to follow every single rule and got banned with no warning regardless. Use the site at your own risk. It is unfortunate. My name was Sel on there and go ahead and look at my track record. I was behaving perfectly.

I have so far had a pleasant time talking and learning on Fishlore I am new haven't been on long, so I don't feel quite like giving 5 stars yet but so far it's been pretty nice, I have gotten to know alot of people on here who have been very kind to me and helped me through alot cycling my tank and answering my questions. Have not experienced and negative really I made a couple of mistakes "posting to wrong part of forum and posting a pic of the tank I wanted to buy /Oppps" they were not mean about it by all means they just let me know it was a no no and took it down, understandably I know copywrite rules I thought it was just the link my bad lol . I hope to be a member for many years to come we shall see. ;)

I was a well known member of Fishlore, over 4000 messages when I was banned without explanation as a part of that mass banning for "poaching" members. No one was ever telling anyone to quit Fishlore to join somewhere else, we were just giving people, who we had become friends with another place to meet. I never wanted to be banned, I would definitely still be there if they didn't ban me. The mods are quite thin skinned and even cowardly, they hide behind their ban buttons. Do some searching, you will find MANY other forums with better mods and members. I can't wait to get the same obviously copied and pasted message that Fishlore has sent out to other low reviews! Edit: If there were no mass banning, then please explain to me how 15+ people were banned in a period of two days? And I want you to tell me EXACTLY where I admitted that I broke forum rules. Because I know I never said that.

Many of us come here looking for answers, and who knows, maybe swimming around older posts and asking will help you? All our pets are differents, but our fins babies needs the best we can give them too!

Love this forum. I've run into a couple know-it-alls, but that's par for the course with literally every forum everywhere. A majority of the members are extremely helpful (in a nice way!) and it's a great community for the hobby.

I was a member of Fishlore for almost 6 years, with over 2500 posts helping and learning from fellow aquarists. As I was reading some of the reviews here, I noticed a review that one of the mods replied to. The mod stated, "We don't ban members very often and only after they have been given several warnings about forum rules violations." This is simply not true. I was banned from FL without any warning, and from what I can tell, my crime was belonging to another fish forum. Others I know had a similar experience. I enjoyed my time on FL but was treated terribly by the mods there. There are certainly more welcoming aquarium forums available.

Great information and lots of help but some people can be aggressive and may get into arguements that can get carried away, mods are also aggressive and sometimes dont help the situation. But i got lots of help for my aquatic questions, it just the mod and admins.