About our references
Our reading lists include books and articles found through library catalogs and journal indexes. A listing gives you publication details and a way to find the work; it does not mean we have read its full text. Article summaries and findings are based on the text identified on that article's page.
Follow the source links to explore the originals. Access and reuse are different: a paper or photograph being free to view does not give us permission to republish it. Credits and license details accompany the material we share.
Have a correction? Message us on Instagram.
Public references
These databases open the door to the original record.
Most are free to search. Use them to reach the paper, law, trade record, book edition, or shop listing closest to the question.
The Aquatic Gardener index
www.aquatic-gardeners.org
The complete index of the only English language journal of the planted aquarium, 1985 to 2026. 163 issues, 318 authors, 1,228 article entries, 495 keywords.2 Free to read, with no account needed. The best English language source we have found, and the first stop for checking whether a claim has a real published origin.
UN Comtrade
comtrade.un.org
Every country's declared imports and exports, by product code. Codes 0301.11 and 0301.19 are live ornamental fish, fresh water and other.3 This is how the trade page replaced hobby estimates with customs records.
Remember that the value is declared customs value at the border, that not every country reports every year, and that some rows are the database's own estimates rather than reported figures.
CITES Trade Database
trade.cites.org/cites_trade/shipments
Recorded international movements of listed species. This is where we found that Armenia imports live stony corals from Indonesia under Appendix II permits, and that only 15 of 1,379 Armenian import records carry an importer reported quantity.4
The database is the trade record only. The convention's appendices, which say what is listed in the first place, are published separately and are cited separately here.
ARLIS, the Armenian legal database
www.arlis.am
The state legal information system. Every Armenian law, decision and ministerial order cited on this site was read here, in Armenian, in the version marked current, including the fauna law, the administrative offences code, the annual amateur fishing order and the Red Book decision.
Always cite the version, because article numbers move. The protected areas law was completely restated in 2026 and its numbering has changed twice.5 Coverage of Soviet era instruments is thin, which is why three ban dates on this site are attributed to the Red Book rather than independently checked.
Europe PMC and Crossref
europepmc.org
crossref.org
Both are free to search. Every DOI on this site was resolved against at least one of these, and against OpenAlex as well.6 They are also how open access status was established for each paper, which matters more here than usual: a paywalled reading list is useless to a hobbyist in Yerevan.
Open Library
openlibrary.org
Used to verify every ISBN, publisher and year on the reading page.7 Where its record was ambiguous, the ambiguity is printed rather than resolved: several Amano and Baensch volumes carry no confirmed number on this site for exactly that reason.
It merges editions into single records more often than you would like. Confirm the edition against the ISBN before printing either.
Wikipedia language links
hy.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org
Not used as an authority, used as a map. The language links establish which concepts have an Armenian term at all,8 which is a real finding in a language with no settled vocabulary for this hobby. It is also how we found that the Armenian article for volcanic tuff is cross linked to the English article for a completely different rock.
A language link is evidence that a term exists in use. It is not evidence that the term is correct, and in the tuff case it is evidence that it is wrong.
Shop catalogs
gazanik.am
A shop's own published catalog is a primary source about that shop. It is how we counted 692 products, 77 plant lines, 16 stones and exactly one driftwood listing,9 and how we read the real Armenian trade vocabulary off a working shop's category names rather than out of a dictionary.
Structure and counts are solid. Individual prices are indicative, because a shop changes them without changing its catalog.
The Internet Archive
web.archive.org
Two jobs. It proves absence: a domain with zero captures ever has never had a website,10 which is how one Armenian shop's lack of web presence was established rather than assumed. And it retrieves documents that have since been taken down, which is how the reading standards table behind the children's pages was read after the live copy disappeared.
Chinese export directories
www.made-in-china.com
Plain HTML product searches that reveal the real manufacturing geography behind trade names. This is how we established that the first page of Seiryu Stone listings all come from a single Hebei company at 350 to 600 US dollars a tonne,11 and that one popular stone name returns nothing at all at the quarry end.
Local knowledge belongs here too
Small shops, hobby groups, and local makers often publish through social pages rather than formal directories.
If you know a useful Armenian source that is missing, send it. A current local listing can be more useful than a large international database when the question is what somebody can find this week.
Books and guides
Two practical guides bring the local material together.
One gathers Armenian vocabulary. The other brings together styles, hardscape, and water chemistry in Russian.
Document one
Armenian Translations for Aquascaping
Armenian aquascapers are still shaping the vocabulary of the hobby.12 The guide sets out three useful candidate forms, which are collected with the rest of the working vocabulary in the Armenian glossary.
Document two
Aquascaping Glossary and Materials Guide
A Russian language glossary of styles, stones, woods and water chemistry, strong on Iwagumi, Nature Aquarium, biotope, Dutch and Wabi-Kusa, and on the standard hardscape stones.13 Its passing note that Armenia is a source of volcanic lava rock turned out to be correct and to undersell the case badly, which is where the local stone section came from.
A book we do not own yet
The Armenian animal names dictionary
Hayrapetyan, Tigran (2018), a Latin, Armenian, Russian and English dictionary of the names of the vertebrate animals of Armenia, Yerevan State University Press, ISBN 978-5-8084-2276-6,14 with fish on pages 15 to 20. It is the citable Armenian authority for every fish name this site prints, and we have not consulted it directly. It is recorded here because a hub of this kind should own a copy.
References by topic
Browse the reference shelf by topic.
References are not collected into an appendix at the back of this site. Each page ends with the sources for that page, because a reference is only useful next to the claim it supports. This is the map.
The Armenian scene
A peer reviewed hydrogeochemistry paper for the water, the utility's own statement for the seasonal change, a heavy metals study for the rivers, the shop's own catalog, and the legal database for every article of law cited.
The Armenian glossary
The national dictionary, the Armenian encyclopedia with each article's language link checked, a working shop's Armenian category names, and the supplied translation document.
For children
Published text complexity standards, a peer reviewed children's science journal's author rules, developmental psychology on invisible causes and on analogy, and the microbiology of real home aquarium filters.
Reading
A library catalog for every ISBN, the largest Russian bookshop for the translation question, the journal's open index, and Crossref with Europe PMC for every DOI.
Trade and geography
The United Nations customs database for every trade figure, the endangered species trade database for what Armenia actually imports under permit, and Chinese export directories for the real geography behind Japanese stone names.
The rest of the library
Styles and history, the competitions and their winners, materials and water chemistry, and livestock with the place each species is really from. Each carries its own sources section on the same standard.
- The Aquatic Gardener complete index, 1985 to 2026. Aquatic Gardeners Association published index, aquatic-gardeners.org, covering every issue and every article entry. 163 issues, 318 authors, 1,228 article entries, 495 keywords. counted 8 September 2026
- UN Comtrade, free public data. comtrade.un.org. HS 0301.11, live ornamental freshwater fish, and HS 0301.19, live ornamental fish other. Every trade figure on this site names its reporter, its year and the date it was read, on the page that prints it. queried 8 September 2026
- CITES Trade Database. trade.cites.org/cites_trade/shipments, for Armenia, entity 85. Source of the 1,379 Armenian import records and the 15 that carry an importer-reported quantity. queried 8 September 2026
- ARLIS, the Armenian state legal information system. arlis.am. Every Armenian law, government decision and ministerial order cited on this site, read in Armenian in the version marked current. read 8 September 2026
- Europe PMC and Crossref. Europe PMC search and Crossref works, plus OpenAlex. Every DOI on this site was resolved against at least one of them. 8 and 9 September 2026
- Open Library. openlibrary.org. Every ISBN, publisher and year on the reading page. checked 8 September 2026
- MediaWiki language link interface. en.wikipedia.org and hy.wikipedia.org. Used as a map of which concepts have an Armenian term at all, not as an authority, and the route by which the tuff and tufa cross-linking error was found. checked 8 September 2026
- Gazanik, its published product catalogue. gazanik.am/wp-json/wc/store/v1/products/categories and the matching
/product-category/pages. Source of the 692 products, 77 plant lines, 16 stones and one driftwood listing, and of the Armenian trade vocabulary on the glossary. read 8 and 9 September 2026 - The Internet Archive and its CDX index. web.archive.org. Used to prove absence, a domain with zero captures having never had a website, and to retrieve documents since taken down. 8 September 2026
- Made-in-China.com product searches. Seiryu Stone and the matching Dragon Stone, Ohko Stone and Frodo Stone searches. Source of the single Hebei supplier on the first page and the 350 to 600 US dollars a tonne price. accessed 8 September 2026
- Armenian Translations for Aquascaping. Supplied directly, not published online. Establishes that the Language Committee and the Nayiri and Bararan lexicons carry no entry for aquascaping, and proposes the transliteration the glossary carries as an alternate.
- Aquascaping Glossary and Materials Guide. In Russian, supplied directly and not published online. Used for the style and stone definitions on the glossary and the styles page.
- Hayrapetyan, Tigran (2018). Latin, Armenian, Russian and English dictionary of the names of the vertebrate animals of Armenia. Yerevan State University Press. ISBN 978-5-8084-2276-6. Not held by this hub; recorded because it is the book that would settle the Armenian fish names.
Continue
Where to go next.
Reading
Books with real ISBNs and papers with DOIs, open access marked.
Credits
The photographers, named, with the licence each photograph is used under.
The Sevan archive
The single largest body of primary material this hub found, indexed and free.
The library home
The library the references belong to.