How Tank Talks decides what to publish, where our information comes from, and how we handle errors and corrections. Not a legal disclosure — that's a separate page — but what we'd want to know as the reader.
Tank Talks covers freshwater aquarium keeping: fish, shrimp, plants, water chemistry, equipment, and the practical knowledge of running a tank well. We do not cover saltwater systems, public-aquarium operations, or fish farming.
Within that scope, our articles fall into a few categories:
We try to be useful first and authoritative second. Most aquarium content on the internet is written either to capture search traffic or to sell a product. We try to write things we'd want to read if we were the reader.
We rely on three categories of sources, in roughly this order of weight:
Peer-reviewed scientific research. When a topic has been studied formally — bacterial nitrification, ammonia toxicity, species-level water parameter requirements — we cite the underlying papers. We try to read the actual research rather than summarize hobbyist articles that summarize the research.
Government scientific agencies. USGS species profiles, EPA water quality criteria, USFWS ecological risk assessments, and similar federal sources are public-domain in the United States and are explicitly cited as primary sources where relevant. These are the most reliable factual references for species native ranges, invasive status, and water quality benchmarks.
Established hobby and industry sources. For practical care advice that hasn't been formally studied (and a lot of it hasn't), we draw on guidance that has converged across multiple respected sources: 2hr Aquarist, Aquarium Co-Op, established breeders, university extension publications, and similar. We try to triangulate rather than rely on any single source.
Personal experience. Where an article describes something we've done in our own tanks (such as the nitrate-control article), we say so explicitly. We don't fabricate personal stories to make articles feel more authoritative.
To be explicit about a few editorial commitments:
We make mistakes. The aquarium hobby is full of evolving knowledge — recall that the basic science of which bacteria cycle a freshwater tank wasn't sorted out until 1998 — and articles written today may need correction in five years.
Our approach:
We're a small operation. The same people who run the editorial side also run the affiliate side. We try to keep them honest by:
We are not currently funded by any aquarium-industry company, sponsor, or advertiser. If that ever changes, we'll disclose it prominently.
As of the date of this page, we have not published any sponsored content. If we ever do, it will be:
We reserve the right to refuse sponsored content that conflicts with our editorial judgment.
We don't track readers across sites, and we don't share reader data with any retailer or third party. The affiliate-link tracking that retailers use is anonymous referral data — they know "a visitor came from Tank Talks," not who you are. If we ever add analytics, we'll use a privacy-respecting option (Cloudflare Web Analytics or Plausible) that doesn't track individuals.
Comments, if we ever add them, will require an email address only for spam prevention and won't be shared.
We care about the welfare of the animals our readers keep. Editorial commitments that follow from this:
For corrections, source questions, sponsorship inquiries, or feedback: [email protected].
For affiliate-disclosure-specific questions, see our affiliate disclosure page.
Last updated: May 9, 2026.