Fishlore Omdömen 119

9 times out of 10 the website is offline showing an error page with error message "Forbidden"

I hate that it keeps showing up in my web searches but then I click and I can't access it.

Too many trolls that masquerade as VIP experts on that site. I witnessed time and time again these 'experts' giving people bad advice that kills their fish. The moderators are extremely rude and will ban anyone without warning who doesn't follow their ridiculous rules. These rules are nonsensical, and people aren't aware of them till after being banned. Being active on that website was the worst experience of my fishkeeping hobby, and I do not recommend them in the least. Do yourself a big favor and stay away.

Update: Fishlore moderators are only interested in getting views since they make money from running ads on their site. They couldnt care less about protecting members from trolls. It is all about ad revenue for them and is the reason they ban people on a whim. They dont care about members at all just the volume of views they can get.

Snotty fish people is the only thing u'll find on this garbage forum. Can't even access it nowadays since they seem to have banned based on IP so u'll most likely need a VPN.
Worthless , just look somewhere else if you need help , there are far better forums and places than this filth.

The people that respond to your posts are top notch. They are very helpful and each fish has an expert. The minor problem is the search. Keywords are not prioritized.

I was researching about self-fertilization of gastropods. i opened so many websites until i found this website. opened the website and it's 403 forbidden error. i thought the website geoblocked but actually, they have suspicious background story (mostly from TrustPilot).

many people reports that this website has really, really poor site management (people got banned for no reason & guests like me immediately not allowed to access their content). this website is public and got indexed by search engines but why they make it unaccessible. i do not have any wrongdoings. i do send feedback to google to de-rank the website.

i hope representative from this website could reply to me as soon as possible (with understandable answers)

Nothing is great. Just keep yourself in the dark cell. There are so many other useful and friendly websites around. I ban you as well.

Great place until you do something that the mods don't like. I was honestly enjoying my time on the site, and there was some good advice being shared. Also it is pretty active.
But when I made a post about offering to help content creators with what I am good at (a way of giving back to the community) I was banned. No warning, not reason, not communication!
I can't read their message explaining why I was banned (i assume this is what it is about) because i am banned. Also I get no response on any emails that I sent (NOT EVEN THEIR PRIVACY POLICY EMAIL!).

My conclusion is, that it is a fine community that don't know how to run a community and basically are breaking the law (at least for users here in EU). I was looking for an alternative to Reddit, but it turned out to be even worse than Reddit!

The mods are a bunch of jerks on that site. They claim to be all about encouraging debate and welcoming newcomers. Then they constantly edit, censor, and even steal your content.

They claim to have the right to do this in their terms of service however their TOS has a clause stating they can change their terms at any time with no notice to users. This actually makes their TOS unenforceable. Look it up there are legal precedents set against that.

The users are of course people some nice some judgemental but the mods have this “see me after class” attitude and are very passive aggressive. After I experienced this I realized once you post something you cannot remove it without explicit permission from said mods. I asked politely to have my account removed. No answer, so I asked if my content, which legally belongs to me, could be removed from their site. They really do not care about the users. They care about sales and marketing.

They would like to have the appearance of having over 111,000 users even if this means a good portion of them are completely unwilling participants whose intellectual property has been stolen from them.

It’s sad because the platform is really cool and could be used in a much more positive manner but they don’t give a rats behind about the actual users.

I see in a reply below that they “take copyright infringement very seriously.” Apparently only they(mods and admin) have the right to steal peoples intellectual property. What a joke! The more reviews I read it becomes more and more clear that fishlore is a truly toxic environment. And in their response comments I have seen lies, and their typical cordially unapologetic responses.

I am somewhat surprised by the way mods seem to arbitrarily pick out people to discipline or “correct” over minor forum use mistakes. Yet someone who bears the label of article contributor on their site tried to tell a newcomer that you should adjust temps for a betta according to how active the fish is based on flawed logic, comparing it to humans/mammals acclimating to low temps by exposure to lower temps. Uhh hello fish are cold blooded! You will never get a fish to acclimate to a temperature they haven’t evolved to exist in. Mammals are warm blooded. This is basic biology and goes to show the level of knowledge that a lot of the higher ranked individuals on this forum claim to have. I used the report comment button that they mention repeatedly in the replies to reviewers and they have yet to correct or eliminate the potentially harmful pseudoscience.

I believe a forum like this has great potential but the way it is run is ethically and scientifically flawed. Too bad people don’t realize until they have been reeled in..

One day I was on fish lore and I got banned for no reason I think they thought I was under thirteen an I really like this app so I really want to be allowed back in

This was a very great forum overall. The mods were very friendly and the members have helped me A LOT. I went from a 0.5gallon betta bowl to a beautifully scapped 8 gallon tank. They answered all my questions patiently even though some of them were very dumb questions. I definitely do recommend joining this forum. I do have to say, they are a little stricter than other forums and won't give warnings before banning.

However, I was banned for (I think) no reason at all. Maybe I did something wrong but I do not remember it, but could I at least know what I did wrong? It just said that I was banned and the reason was rule violations. I went through all the rules and nothing sticked out in my mind. I also didn't get any emails about what I did wrongly. If any mods of Fishlore is reading this, could you please tell me what I did wrong? My username was BettasXD. Thank you.

BANNED FOR NO REASON!

I posted a YouTube video on the thread to a member to show to her betta that I was buying to see how it reacted to guppies! I got banned for copywrite! THAT WAS MY VIDIO! I made it in my channel!!! I sent them an email, will update if I get unbanned! And if they don’t respond, I have no was of getting the betta from the other member!

Terrible! Banned for no good reason! I joined fishlore after looking around for a few months. I had A LOT of questions. There were very few members that were not rude. All of a sudden, the mods started criticizing me for questions I asked and I don't even understand what exactly the problem was. After a while, I started repaying all the nice members that helped me by helping them. The mods kept writing absolute rude messages to me. They never answered my questions. I have a website on which I'm selling a few of my fish and plants and put the link to it into my profile. Then one of the mods, who was absolutely terrible to me (Coradee), wrote me a very rude message saying that "Now that I have a website selling livestock and plants, I can no longer sell on fishlore." She took down all my selling posts and told me to sponsor their forum in order to be able to promote my website in any way. So, I guess, filling in your profile is considered self-promotion. I explained that I was just a kid and unable to spend that kind of money and I was going to remove the link to my website. But before I was able to, I was banned because I was under 13 which she said was against "the rule". I checked. There is no such rule. If you're referring to the law: I had my parents' consent. Now, I am left with a whole bunch of questions that I can't ask. Whenever you slip up the slightest possible way, they ban you or send you very rude messages about it. Use fishlore at your own risk.

Instead of just giving a few warnings before banning moderators are banning people instantly, who came up with the idea to give some rando such power I think it’s only right to give warning as everyone deserves a second chance also once banned you can’t rejoin just plain stupid people learn from their mistakes

Arbitrarily banned without any warnings or indication of rule broken. Still unsure what rule they considered to have been broken.

Also they allow a lot of silly obnoxious and baiting posts from members (mostly kids) and in general there are a lot of kids with simplistic questions and parroting other members without adding any real insight or understanding what they are parroting.
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Having said that there are some very knowledgeable and helpful members.
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To be fair before i was banned i would have given the site 2 1/2 * mostly because of the few knowledgeable and helpful folks with off the wall thinking (i.e, how to approach non-standard situation - a 'standard' situation is cycling a tank for example; while something more interesting might be growing a rare species of plant or different designs for filtration on large tanks).
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Last but least in my opinion you want to make nice to moderator Lucy. If she dislikes you bye bye but if she likes you there are no rules.

Kid site

90% are children asking very childish questions. Most ask about issues that can’t be remedied like buying inadequate fish for their tanks, or not knowing the nitrogen cycle, or just doing no so smart things. Then not being able to buy even the basics to keep fish healthy because they’re children. Parents irresponsibly bought them a setup they because people think fish are ‘easy’ and ‘inexpensive’ - a ‘great first pet for a kid’ and now their kids are briefly interested.

Not a lot here for even a somewhat knowledgeable aquarist. Posters eventually grow out of it very quickly because well they’re children. They give out poor advice as you can imagine as well.

There are a couple posters who know a bit but don’t post much - if you really want to be knowledgeable in the hobby this isn’t the forum to be.

I joined Fishlore back in October, and in just that short amount of time, I’ve learned a HUGE amount. It’s probably the best forum I’ve ever been on! It’s incredibly active, and you’re likely to get help with most problems within 20 minutes of posting. You will get very good advice (most of the time). It’s a very welcoming environment, and I frequently find myself logging on just to chat!

Yes, you will occasionally get poor advice from inexperienced people, but that’s to be expected in any public forum. The good thing about Fishlore is its intolerance of this poor advice. Other members will quickly correct false information and provide more accurate facts instead.

It is also HEAVILY monitored by a team of wonderful moderators who work very hard to ensure a pleasant and family-friendly environment. Excessively rude or aggressive comments are either deleted or edited by a moderator very quickly if necessary. The mods understand that kids are able to view this forum, and do their best to keep things clean. They also participate in the conversations and add their own knowledge and experience, unlike some other forums I’ve been on.

Some members can be quite direct, but they don’t mean to be rude. I’ve seen many people get offended by some of these members, only to find out it was a complete misunderstanding. When you get to know these members, many are honestly wonderful people.

This site is filled to the brim with knowledgeable and helpful people, and there is always someone around willing to answer your questions. They saved the lives of some of my fish, and I am incredibly grateful.

It isn’t even entirely centered around fishkeeping. Many people there also keep reptiles, birds, amphibians, invertebrates, mammals, and houseplants of all sorts. You can ask a question about a lizard or a monstera, and still get plenty of good advice.

I can’t recommend this forum more to new or experienced keepers. It’s a friendly place filled with great people.

Amazing! Love this place, it has a ton of very helpful people on there, and I love discussing fish with people. The mods are great! And for all the negative reviews about mods. They can be very strict, but there are kids, they need to keep it clean. And for other people on here, we all try to be as kind as possible, and I have only ever seen 1 fight break out and I've been here for a year. And I've seen reviews about the well known tags mean nothing and stuff, they aren't supposed to mean anything, see how long they've been in the hobby, and go off that.

Very aggressive environment. I enjoy forums for sharing of ideas, helping each other with issues and interesting information. This website has none of that. It’s filled with members that bully each other and mods doing the same.

I was excited to find such an active forum, and was very disappointed with how it turned out. I used to be extremely active on another forum back in 2012, and was a respected member. I’ve recently gotten interested in fish again after a long hiatus, and decided that I wanted to join some forums again. I am in the beginning stages of creating a blog, and posted a thread asking what books other members had found most useful and accurate. I explained clearly that I was interested in creating a list for my new blog. My post was removed with no explanation, and when I contacted Mike to ask about it, he told me that I had broken rules about linking to outside sites. I hadn’t posted any links, and when I told him that, he accused me of trying to get the forum members to write my blog for me. I was simply asking for suggestions to help focus my research for building the list, and I was frankly shocked by the hostility I faced because of that.

Had to leave because I tried asking a question about stocking an aquarium only to be hounded about the fact that I sanitised my tank and equipment after my fish died? Even if it was “unnecessary” it still makes me feel more comfortable putting another aquatic friend in there somewhere down the line
Also being a “well known member” means absolutely nothing in terms of the information they give you since one almost convinced me to put epsom salt INTO my aquarium!
It’s generally filled with middle aged know-it-alls that kind of speak to you like your a toddler that got caught with their hand in a cookie jar.