# Ranking among planted sites



## Faruk Gençöz

According to ranking among all the web sites (www.alexa.com) :

Traffic Rank for plantedtank.net: *139,852* 
Traffic Rank for aquaticplantcentral.com: *143,384*  
Traffic Rank for barrreport.com: 165,753 
Traffic Rank for aquatic-gardeners.org: 179,684 
Traffic Rank for aquaticquotient.com: *187,377* 
Traffic Rank for plantgeek.net: 514,755 
Traffic Rank for aquabotanic.com: *515,149*

Any other planted tank forum sites?

On the basis of 7 sites above the average rank for the freshwater planted tank forums seems *263708* for the time being.


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## Faruk Gençöz

*comparison to reef tank forums*

Saltwater reef tank rankings:

Traffic Rank for *reefcentral.com*: *14,413* 
Traffic Rank for *thereeftank.com:* 106,304 
Traffic Rank for *reefaquariumguide.com:* *746,194* 
Traffic Rank for* reeflounge.com:* *1,049,498*

a simple Google search about the reef tanks gives the idea that there are many more forums on this hobby than the planted tank hobby. Besides there seems to be more forums about the reef tanks, the ranking for the reef central.com is way up. It is just an example that I found and I know nothing about the popular reef tank forums. With these possibly very limited statistics I can imagine that many many more people are interested in the reefs than the planted tanks.

I would like to understand the motivations of reef tank people about why they chose the saltwater and reefs and not the freshwater and the planted ones. I believe the main concern would be the more variety of fish and inverts which have also more color as compared to fresh water fish and inverts.


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## Gomer

Ask yourself: At what age did you know about reef tanks. At what age did you know about planted tanks?

For me, I knew about reefs when I was very very young from places like Seaworld. On the other end of the spectrum, I learned about planted tanks only a few years ago.


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## Faruk Gençöz

I can draw two hypotheses from your question. The first one is about the frequency of the exposition to the reefs and the second is the timing of the exposition. 

According to the frequency hypothesis the more we are exposed to reefs the more we will be involved with them.

The timing hypothesis says whatever we were exposed, earlier, it can affect more what we will be involved in the future.

Both hypotheses are true at least for me.

I saw the first reef aquarium 6 years ago and saw the first planted one at least 25 years ago. I guess the ratio of frequency of seeing a reef tank to the frequency of a planted tank is 1/50 for me. I never had a reef tank and currently I don't think I will have in the future. 

Do you have a reef tank, Gomer? Do you visit reef tank forums frequently?


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## SnakeIce

I always saw the reef tank as some sort of status thing, it takes a good amount of money to get one set up. I saw plants as something I could have that would increase the complexity of the tanks I had without the high cost of saltwater.

just higher cost lends a percieved value to reef keeping over planted tanks.


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## Laith

I've never had the opportunity to setup a reef tank...

But given what I (and others) can spend to set up a good planted tank system, are reef tanks really that much more costly to setup? Or is that a perception only?


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## Gumby

Eh, reef tanks are a good bit more costly. You need a lot more light, like 5wpg+ for a lot of corals. Live rock is also VERY expensive... around $6-$12 a pound and you want roughly one pound for gallon, if not more. Aside from that, you need a lot of flow and a protein skimmer. Not to mention the price of coral ranges from $5-$500 per piece, depending on size/quality/rarity. And then there's fish, anywhere from $5-$500 each as well.


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## Gomer

fgencoz said:


> Do you have a reef tank, Gomer? Do you visit reef tank forums frequently?


I have a 5g cube that will be a nano reef when I move offices in a month or so. I don't have one at home because I'd have to scrap all the planted stuff for that tank (I don't like relocating livestock) and DI/RO supply is an issue for me. In the office, I can go nextdoor for some DI water.


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## Faruk Gençöz

Gomer,

I understand that you have spent less time and money to the reefs than the planted tanks, recently. If this is true, then how would you explain the less intense interest in the reefs when also considering your history of exposition to the reefs? 

SnakeIce, Laith, and Gumby,

Do you think that the idea "having a planted aquarium is more prestigious/status giving than a fish-only tank" goes parallel with the belief that "the costs of having a planted tank is higher than the fish-only tanks"?


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## SnakeIce

Both a planted tank and a full reef tank have more complexity than a fish only tank of either water density. 

A reef tank is more dependant on haveing the support systems running to keep it alive than plants tend to be in general. A failure of those systems is only one cause of the potential crash that could wipe out more than half the life in the reef tank.

Planted tanks have alot more varying schools of thought on the composition of the esential equipment. 

Non aquarists don't seem to be impressed with my plants, but the fishtank keepers that have seen my setups are always wowed, and i don't think I have anything spectacular.


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## Faruk Gençöz

SnakeIce said:


> Non aquarists don't seem to be impressed with my plants, but the fishtank keepers that have seen my setups are always wowed, and i don't think I have anything spectacular.


This is what I experience often. Many young people come to my office and look at my tank which is full of plants. They look but see nothing and ask where the fish are. If they see a red fish they immediately say "Wow! A wonderful tank". When they do not see a fish they usually ask with a frustrated tone of voice "what the tank is for?" These people are amazing, I really enjoy when observing their reactions.

People who have experience with the tanks however immediately notice the plants and start a conversation about how to grow.

I believe the very beginers are attracted by the fish colors other than metallic silver and by the plants other than green.


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## SnakeIce

When I tell people that I don't have my 75 gallon tank set up yet because I still have to get equipment for it invariably I get asked, "Are you setting up a saltwater tank?

Same thing when I say I don't want that (setup/hood/____), it doesn't have enough light over it. Or I'll have to change the light fixture out for a better one. "You have/going to have a saltwater tank?"


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## Gumby

I equally like fish and plants. I don't think I could ever keep a tank without fish of some kind in it. On the other hand, I could never do a freshwater set up without live plants. The look of fake plants and decoration seems to be a way of saying "I'm new at this." People who know what they're doing (and have the time) when it comes to fish keeping usually keep live plants with their fish.

To be honest, I've found that keeping a high tech planted tank is less costly, but much more work than a reef tank. With reef tanks you can get by on doing a water change once a month or less. To keep things stable on my planted system I do weekly water changes. On top of that there is dosing and trimming and replanting etc. 

With a reef tank it's not so much work. You can use a refugium to deal with nitrates/phosphates. Use an automated calcium reactor for calcium source. Dose Mg /Iodine/Trace once or twice a week and change the skimmer cup when it's full. Not that bad, really. Coral growth is so slow that you rarely have to "trim" and when you do you can make a decent profit. 

The main reason I don't have a big reef is that I don't feel like investing the money(poor college student) and I honestly just like freshwater more. When doing a reef tank you have to take things like "coral warfare" (stinging/allelopathy) and water flow into account. You don't have to worry about that with planted tanks. I find the planted tanks to be more rewarding because you can see the results of your actions in a shorter period of time. Corals take weeks-years to see signifigant grow. With plants, some will grow an inch a day.


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## Faruk Gençöz

After the contest results are released I wanted to test if it worked. We are going upward! This upward movement is also related with the increased site speed!

Traffic Rank for aquaticplantcentral.com:  110,789 :-D
Traffic Rank for plantedtank.net: * 118,348* 
Traffic Rank for barrreport.com: * 151,853* 
Traffic Rank for aquatic-gardeners.org: * 219,993* 
Traffic Rank for aquaticquotient.com: * 257,990* 
Traffic Rank for plantgeek.net: * 320,702* 
Traffic Rank for aquabotanic.com: * 527,462*

The average: *243,877  *
It was: 263,708

To be able to test if the old members are becoming more addicted or some other new members are coming and increasing the traffic rate, which index should be used? Any idea?


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## MiamiAG

Faruk,

As always, I love the way your mind works and the statistics you're bringing up. I have no idea if there is an index that would capture that sort of information.

I can tell you that the cost of starting a reef tank can be in the thousands of dollars, certainly an SPS tank. Of course, you can start it for much less but it takes particular skill to do so. I would venture a guess that the average initial expense would be between $1,000 to $2,000. I believe this is much more than the average for planted tanks.

In the US, the saltwater aquarium hobby is extremly popular as a result of many factors. I think the most important are popular scuba diving, public institutions like aquariums and Seaworld, magazine coverage and wide availability of products in local aquarium stores. They were also early adopters of Internet forums (e.g., reefs.org and then reefcentral.com).

I would venture to stay that the average person in the US has never seen a well-aquascaped planted aquarium. When you mention plants in a freshwater aquarium, they think of plastic plants. Interestingly enough, 1 in 4 Americans has kept a freshwater aquarium, however, the overwhelming majority were 10 gallons or less and composed of plastic plants, bubbling treasure chests, and colored gravel.

I think this is because of the terribly poor job of marketing aquarium plants by the aquarium plant growers in the US, the almost non-existant distribution of plants in local aquarium shops, mostly poor coverage in magazines, no public institutions promoting the hobby, etc.


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## Faruk Gençöz

Art_Giacosa said:


> I think this is because of the terribly poor job of marketing aquarium plants by the aquarium plant growers in the US, the almost non-existant distribution of plants in local aquarium shops, mostly poor coverage in magazines, no public institutions promoting the hobby, etc.


I agree with these points. When considering the same points in Turkey and the large number of the sellers that guide the beginners always in the wrong ways I would also target the uneducated sellers in this business.

In 2004 I organized a training program in which faculty members from the Biology, Geology and Fisheries departments were involved to train the aquarists at an advanced level. At the end of the second year my intention was to begin to train the sellers with the already trained aquarists. I was quite successful in the first step of organization but I recognized during the process that I could not find any company which would pay a fee for their sellers to be trained. The system in the markets works on the balance between uneducated sellers and the huge number of beginners. The beginners almost always fail so there is no sophisticated information is needed to be successful in this business. Success is avoided indeed. The shops are full of Chinese and no quality products. The fish are so cheap that a beginner can easily buy. While buying the cheaper fish of course they should also buy the other cheaper products along with the wrong guidance which brings an inevitable failure. I believe 90% of the whole money is between uneducated sellers and the beginners, in Turkey. The animals and plants are dying. People begin to hate aquarium keeping and quit. But there are many media sources which attract and introduce many many new beginners to the hobby. Uneducated sellers are waiting for them to sell cheep products. And the viscous cycle maintains itself. I believe the cycle can be broken by the trained sellers and the aquarium journals.


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## Faruk Gençöz

I always wondered how APC appeared two years ago. While trying to understand how alexa.com works I discovered some archived pages that show how APC looked in different points in time.

It is like a time machine. Check out the page below and visit APC two years ago. See the great improvement in time.

http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.aquaticplantcentral.com


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## MiamiAG

Wow Faruk, I wasn't aware that existed!

Yes, we had a very humble beginning! The first pages show the standard skin of the phpBB forum software. Brings back a lot of memories. We had a whopping 300+ members.


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## standoyo

this discussion is very interesting because planted tanks only began flourishing at the same time equipment[pressurized co2 and lighting] and literature/coffee table photography like Amano's Nature Aq series became available...

here in malaysia, we always keep an eye on our neighbours...singapore...[we like to shop there! a lot! haha...]
seriously sg on average is more advanced in thinking in terms of proactiveness...

we just wondered why so many foreigners like to traipse into our jungles and collect this and that...:doh:

to answer the question of why i don't reef and why i prefer aquascaping?

In my country, power failures are a regular occurence. this is a very discouraging factor...
it's way too complicated and low tolerance for mistakes and very expensive...
i've heard too many horror stories...

As to the question why more people on the net reefing?

I think it's because it's more complicated. Although they are similar questions in a FW planted tank. eg.how and where to get cheaper. why this and this but much more complicated as there are more science involved IMO.
Movies like finding nemo boosts reefing a whole lot.
son to mummy and daddy, i want nemo...mum looks at daddy...daddy goes on the net to do homework...:biggrin: familiar?

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fgencoz said:


> I always wondered how APC appeared two years ago. While trying to understand how alexa.com works I discovered some archived pages that show how APC looked in different points in time.
> 
> It is like a time machine. Check out the page below and visit APC two years ago. See the great improvement in time.
> 
> http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.aquaticplantcentral.com


that's freaky!


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## Faruk Gençöz

fgencoz said:


> I believe the cycle can be broken by the trained sellers and the aquarium journals.


OK we have some complaints about the market but isn't it odd that we have only several books in the market about aquascaped aquariums and only one journal in English.

The journal is "The Aquatic Gardener" by the Aquatic Gardeners Association: http://www.aquatic-gardeners.org/tag.html. It has rather a long history.

In the history, there was also Planted Aquaria by Dave Gomberg but this attempt did not live long. Please remember why this attemp failed: http://www.wcf.com/pam/

Another excellent journal is Aqua Journal by Lim and Amano. But there are only past 6 issues available in English: http://www.vectrapoint.com

I also heard of a journal published regularly in Germany but I did not know anything about the English translation of it.

The result: There is only one English journal. Is it rational to have complaints about the market? Should we look at ourselves a little bit?


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## Faruk Gençöz

Here is a quote from Gomberg:

"... I am sorry for this turn of events, but hope that someday our hobby will have grown to the point where 15% of the hobbyists will be enough to support a specialized magazine. Till then, 
Sincerely, Dave Gomberg..."


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## standoyo

with the event of the internet being so informative nowadyas it's rather hard to make a magazine profitable running in the long run. there's only so much eg. practical fishkeeping i can buy...which btw is a great magazine.


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## Faruk Gençöz

Is there something about the planted aquariums in the last issue? I did not see plant pages from its web site.



> In my country, power failures are a regular occurence. this is a very discouraging factor...


Internet is a very good source as long as you have the electricity, computer, an internet connection and the time and skill to be able to reach a reliable information.


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## standoyo

no pfk doesn't have planted issues[not that i know of]...i'm just making a point about buying magazines for info...versus looking it up the net.

i like the way amano has incorporated it as a lifestyle element. most of us want that... a lot of apc members have great looking tanks in great looking homes... we just need a magazine editor to pick up on an untapped resource here.


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## Faruk Gençöz

standoyo said:


> we just need a magazine editor to pick up on an untapped resource here.


That's the point. We would also need sponsors and many subscribed members.


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## standoyo

your thread reads ranking of planted tank sites. then you start comparing it to reef sites...

well i'd have to say a lot of aquascaping strides have only been made after the discovery of supplementary co2 in the aid of plant growth. mr amano regales of his sparkling water experiment in one of his book/s. this is not to discount the dutch discoveries...
well that's history...and i'm not good at that.


since i know little about reefing...all i can say is that i've snorkelled in many times in beautiful coral reefs with thousands of colourful fish and inverts...i doubt i can replicate that in my home. not with the the vast size of the reef. not with how much i make. i've consoled myself is that i get to go there every year when i choose, cheaply too.
i also dislike the fact that reefing does considerable ecological damage. i mean like 90+percent of the stuff is collected from the wild...this is hardly sustainable and environmentally unfriendly.


planted tanks however are a different matter, like discus if the flora/fauna are wiped out in the wild, we'd still have them in our homes...and they'd be easy to reproduced/multiplied to reseed destroyed ecosystems. not as easy with ocean fish...how many ppl can breed their own nemo's or dory's.

ok. i'm not trying to start argument with reefers but...there it is...it's up to us isn't it?


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## Faruk Gençöz

Hehehee. We received no reaction from the reefers. We are lucky. 

But I am afraid we won't be able to find people here to be able to produce a regular aquascaping magazine, either.  

I am working for that although there seems to be no hope for having many subscribers and sponsors. May be at the end of 2007 we can see another planted tank magazine in the market.


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## standoyo

fgencoz said:


> Hehehee. We received no reaction from the reefers. We are lucky.
> 
> But I am afraid we won't be able to find people here to be able to produce a regular aquascaping magazine, either.
> 
> I am working for that although there seems to be no hope for having many subscribers and sponsors. May be at the end of 2007 we can see another planted tank magazine in the market.


i'd be happy with a translated version of Aquajournals in the mean time...pretty much guesswork...mysterious text...with the beautiful pictures...sigh.


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## Faruk Gençöz

The average traffic rate of the 7 planted tank sites has been 243,877 whereas it was 263,708 one month ago. So there seems to be a significant increase in the overall traffic among the planted sites. I wonder if we can find the events that correlate with global increases and decreases.

It would be helpful to take notes about the events that happened in the last one month period. Please write all the last month's plant related events that come to your mind. Please also talk about any kind of hypotheses.


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## gnatster

US in general has had colder temps and more snow, more people inside. Watch the drop off as spring arrives in the northern hemisphere.


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## Faruk Gençöz

It is possible to take the weather factor into account. Suppose that people preferred to stay at home an clicked on the forums. This preference increased the overall traffic over the forums. OK, could you further develop a hypothesis about why people significantly lowered their preference only over the aquatic-gardeners and aquaticquotient forums then?


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## Faruk Gençöz

We are flying! This must be the effect of the contest. Alexa averages the traffic on the basis of last three months. So the reactions in the statistics become slower.

Traffic Rank for aquaticplantcentral.com: *84,784*  
Traffic Rank for plantedtank.net: *117,984* 
Traffic Rank for barrreport.com: *150,016* 
Traffic Rank for aquatic-gardeners.org: *244,119* 
Traffic Rank for aquaticquotient.com: *263,975* 
Traffic Rank for plantgeek.net: *308,722* 
Traffic Rank for aquabotanic.com: *489,875*

Average:237,068 

I noticed something. There are exactly the opposite direction of movements of APC and PT in a very few periods. They are going shoulder to shoulder and parallel most of the time. Alexa permits the comparison only between two sites. I wish we could compare 7 sites on the same graphic.
















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## Faruk Gençöz

I am aware of Aquatic Plant Digest but since its communication medium is not a forum I have not included it till now. APD's address is http://fins.actwin.com/aquatic-plants/. It is located under the www.actwin.com directory and Alexa gives the same results for both addresses. www.actwin.com also includes material about reefs and fish. APD is one step beyond us. On the other hand look at carefully to the second graph and see the amazing effect of the APC contest on the page viewing.

Traffic Rank for actwin.com: * 68,474*


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## Faruk Gençöz

*JAN 26th

*Traffic Rank for plantedtank.net: *139,852* 
Traffic Rank for aquaticplantcentral.com: *143,384* :-D 
Traffic Rank for barrreport.com: 165,753 
Traffic Rank for aquatic-gardeners.org: 179,684 
Traffic Rank for aquaticquotient.com: *187,377* 
Traffic Rank for plantgeek.net: 514,755 
Traffic Rank for aquabotanic.com: *515,149*

After the contest:

*FEB 17th*

Traffic Rank for aquaticplantcentral.com: 110,789 :-D
Traffic Rank for plantedtank.net: *118,348* 
Traffic Rank for barrreport.com: *151,853* 
Traffic Rank for aquatic-gardeners.org: *219,993* 
Traffic Rank for aquaticquotient.com: *257,990* 
Traffic Rank for plantgeek.net: *320,702* 
Traffic Rank for aquabotanic.com: *527,462*

The average for the 7 sites: *243,877 :smile: *
It was: 263,708

*FEB 24*

Traffic Rank for aquaticplantcentral.com: *84,784* :-D 
Traffic Rank for plantedtank.net: *117,984* 
Traffic Rank for barrreport.com: *150,016* 
Traffic Rank for aquatic-gardeners.org: *244,119* 
Traffic Rank for aquaticquotient.com: *263,975* 
Traffic Rank for plantgeek.net: *308,722* 
Traffic Rank for aquabotanic.com: *489,875*

Average:237,068 :smile:

*MARCH 14*
*aquaticplantcentral.com:* * 58,963* :first: 
actwin.com: * 66,207* 
plantedtank.net: * 107,359* 
barrreport.com: * 162,452* 
aquatic-gardeners.org: * 267,363* 
aquaticquotient.com: * 423,459* 
plantgeek.net: * 253,456* 
aquabotanic.com: * 494,969*


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## Faruk Gençöz

It is also beneficial to monitor the ranking among the commercial sites that sell plants only. This ranking would give us an important feedback about the state of our hobby all over the world. Please add important sites in your country to the list. I found a surprize here in Turkey:

onlinebitki.com : *460,294* Turkey
aquabotanic.com: *494,969* USA
freshwateraquariumplants.com: * 534,371* USA
aquariumplant.com: *812,493* USA


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## Faruk Gençöz

Before getting the effects of merging between APC and AB let's look at the recent statistics:

Traffic Rank for aquaticplantcentral.com: * 41,608* :cheer2: 
Traffic Rank for actwin.com: * 66,159* 
Traffic Rank for plantedtank.net: * 102,024* 
Traffic Rank for barrreport.com: * 128,735* 
Traffic Rank for aquatic-gardeners.org: * 226,352* 
Traffic Rank for plantgeek.net: * 254,011* 
Traffic Rank for aquaticquotient.com: * 434,681* 
Traffic Rank for aquabotanic.com: * 514,969*


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## jeff63851

I think I have a logical explanation on why there are more users on planted aquatic websites. It could be the fact that students are in their spring break. Over my spring break, I find myself browsing APC more often.



> Before getting the effects of merging between APC and AB


What??? Did I miss something? So is APC going to merge with AB?


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## Faruk Gençöz

No, AB is merging in to APC: http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumapc/announcements/15553-abs-wet-thumb-forum-merge-into.html


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## dennis

Faruk,

Have you considered ranking by something else, like daily posts or the ratio between daily ACTIVE users and registered users? Seems like that would show a better representation to use or quality....


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## Faruk Gençöz

I agree but this would take a lot of time. Looking at Alexa.com is very practical and following the statistics in different points in time makes the results more reliable.


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## plantbrain

fgencoz said:


> According to ranking among all the web sites (www.alexa.com) :
> 
> Traffic Rank for plantedtank.net: *139,852*
> Traffic Rank for aquaticplantcentral.com: *143,384*
> Traffic Rank for barrreport.com: 165,753
> Traffic Rank for aquatic-gardeners.org: 179,684
> Traffic Rank for aquaticquotient.com: *187,377*
> Traffic Rank for plantgeek.net: 514,755
> Traffic Rank for aquabotanic.com: *515,149*
> 
> Any other planted tank forum sites?
> 
> On the basis of 7 sites above the average rank for the freshwater planted tank forums seems *263708* for the time being.


I'm not sure the rankings really tell you much here.

While I do have a forum on my site, the main focus has and shall always be the monthly magazine. The forum was added namely at the request of the readership and to provide a user friendly format.

Comparing a mag to a forum really is not the same.
I was surprised to see the site up there though

Regards, 
Tom Barr


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## Faruk Gençöz

In general, the traffic ranking statistics give a very practical and valuable info about the sites. On the other hand the two sites that surprised me from the beginning were AquaBotanic and BarrReport. I have two explanation for the unexpectedly (my opinion) higher rankings of BarrReport. First, when people pay for their subscription, their tendency to check the site may become more regular and more frequent. Second, there may be more Alexa Toolbar users among BarrReport members as compared to the other sites. I am not sure that the corrections are made when this is the case.

The method used to compute the ranking statistics is below.

*What is Traffic Rank?*
The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis. The main Alexa traffic rank is based on the geometric mean of these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users). The three-month change is determined by comparing the site's current rank with its rank from three months ago. For example, on July 1, the three-month change would show the difference between the rank based on traffic during the first quarter of the year and the rank based on traffic during the second quarter.


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