Hello. I'm Marcus.
I started keeping fish at twelve, when my mother brought home a 40-litre starter kit from a Sunday-afternoon hardware run and dumped four goldfish into uncycled water. Three of them were dead by Wednesday. I've been trying to make up for it ever since.
Aquacanvas is the resource I wish I'd had then. It's a calculator that doesn't lie about its assumptions, a set of guides written for the messy reality of a real tank rather than the polished one in a stock photo, and — I hope — a quiet correction to some of the worst advice the internet keeps recycling.
What we publish
Three things, in roughly equal measure:
- Tools. The volume calculator on the front page is the first of several. A water-change dosage tool and a heater-wattage calculator are in development.
- Long-form writing. Cycling, stocking, water chemistry, equipment selection — the questions a new fishkeeper asks in their first six months, answered properly.
- Build logs and post-mortems. The tanks I've set up, the ones I've torn down, and the disasters I've learnt from (a heater stuck on at 34°C is a story I'll never live down).
What we don't do
We don't sell aquarium equipment. We're not affiliated with any brand. We don't accept sponsored posts, and we don't review products in exchange for them. There are no affiliate links sprinkled into our articles, and we have no plans to add any.
This means the site won't ever fund itself the way most fish-keeping sites do. That's deliberate. The moment a guide becomes a sales channel, its incentives stop pointing at the reader.
How we research
Every claim about water chemistry, stocking, or equipment is checked against at least one of three sources: the academic aquaculture literature (where it's been studied), the collective experience of long-running fishkeeping forums (Tropical Fish Forums UK, The Planted Tank, Reef2Reef), and my own tanks. When the three disagree, I say so.
For numbers — gallons-per-litre conversions, tank volume formulae, dosing maths — we cite the underlying constant or formula in the article. If you spot an error, the contact page is the fastest way to reach me.
Tanks I currently keep
- 180 L planted community. Cardinal tetras, sterbai corys, otocinclus, a small group of Boraras brigittae. Walstad-method substrate, no CO₂ injection.
- 60 L species tank. A pair of Apistogramma cacatuoides and a colony of cherry shrimp.
- 30 L nano reef. Two clownfish, a pair of cleaner shrimp, soft corals only. Three years running, two near-disasters.
- 22 L betta. One ill-tempered halfmoon called Marlow.
Editorial principles
Three rules govern everything that goes on this site:
- If I haven't done it, I don't write about it as if I have. When an article relies on second-hand experience, that's stated clearly.
- Numbers are shown, not asserted. If a calculator gives you a result, the formula behind it is in the methodology section. If a guide quotes a figure, the source is linked.
- The fish come first. When commercial advice (buy this filter, dose this additive) and animal welfare (use a smaller stocking, do another water change) conflict, we side with the fish.
Get in touch
Found a calculation you don't trust? Caught a typo? Have a tank-keeping problem you can't find a sane answer to? The contact page is the way in. I read every message. I reply to most of them — eventually.