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There's a tag which mostly seems to be a special case of . We don't have special compatibility tags for other animals, so it seems inconsistent to have a special case just for fish.

I've looked at the questions that are tagged with this tag and they consist of:

which are all covered by the tag and

which are covered by the tag (the first one possibly also by ).

I can't think of a use for the tag that isn't covered by , , or .

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  • I'm inclined to agree... Seems like odd-ball tag. – John Cavan Mar 26 '14 at 13:09
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The tag came out of this discussion. My thought when I made it was that community tanks are one of the basic setups in fishkeeping, the same way a reef tank would be, and they have their own set of questions and problems. It's not just about compatibility and behavior: there are also questions about water chemistry and quality, medical treatments that some animals in the system would be sensitive to, diet and feeding techniques, lighting schedules, etc. that are all specific to this type of system. So your examples would, in theory, be or questions that deal with a . (I just don't think anyone has asked any of the other kinds yet.)

Let's say, for example, two people have a question about treating tiger barbs that have come down with ich. One person just has the barbs, and the other has a few (still healthy) danios and clown loaches as well. These two questions have different answers, because clown loaches are sensitive to many common ich medications: a good answer to the first question could kill some of the animals involved with the second.

You might say, reasonably, that the second question should also be tagged . The problem we'd run into is that even small tanks often have too many species in them to tag each one, and an aquarist may not necessarily know which, if any, are particularly relevant to the question. Or there may just be too many relevant species to tag. Or someone else in a similar situation might be looking through existing questions, but they have e.g. freshwater stingrays instead of clown loaches, and those just haven't been specifically tagged yet.

So the basic problem here is distinguishing between questions where having a single-species vs. multi-species tank is critical to the answer and/or affects who will be interested in the question in the future. That's what is meant to do.

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  • So you're suggesting they're not about community aquarium issues but about other issues when the fact that there are other species in the aquarium is relevant, is that right? – starsplusplus Mar 26 '14 at 14:11
  • I don't think a question should be tagged just because it's in a community aquarium, no. The tag is not to describe the aquarist's setup, it's to describe the problem. It's just for cases where the community aspect complicates things in some way. – toxotes Mar 26 '14 at 14:22
  • That's what I meant by "when the fact that there are other species in the aquarium is relevant". – starsplusplus Mar 26 '14 at 14:24
  • On review, I was also under the impression community-aquarium was an actual "thing" but it apparently is not; since it duplicates use of "aquarium" (or relevant sub-tags; salt-water, etc.) on the tagged questions, I vote towards the removal of the "c-a" tag with the suggested replacements (or leaving existing) "behavior" and "compatibility" tags as needed (which is fine, seeing how only one of the cited questions needs both). One of the reasons to use tags is to link similar questions, but I don't see "community-aquarium" of multiple types being helpful to each other. – JoshDM Mar 27 '14 at 21:27
  • @JoshDM It is an actual thing. It's the term commonly used for multi-species tanks. I don't feel super-strongly about losing it if I'm the only one who thinks it's useful, but it's a term many aquarists would recognize and understand. – toxotes Mar 27 '14 at 22:46
  • That was what I though, but that didn't come across in your answer above. Since it is a recognized aquarist term, i vote to keep it as originally used. – JoshDM Mar 27 '14 at 23:34

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