Product update
Your camera summaries can now use your tank’s Livestock list
If you keep a Livestock list for a tank, the camera summaries for that tank can now use it. When ReefMind can actually see an animal that matches something you recorded, it can call that animal by name instead of describing a shape and a color.
Your list is context for recognition. It is never proof, and it never decides what is in the frame.
Why summaries used to sound so vague
ReefMind has always had a rule for camera summaries: do not state a species as fact unless the owner has confirmed that animal. That rule is a good one. The problem was that nothing was handing the summary your confirmations.
So even if you had told ReefMind months ago that the yellow fish in your display is a Yellow Tang, the summary still came back with something like “a small yellow surgeonfish-shaped fish.” Cautious, and not very useful. The Livestock list you already keep for that tank now travels with its camera summaries.
What that looks like on a real tank
Say your display tank’s Livestock list has a Yellow Tang, a pair of clownfish, and a cleaner shrimp. A midday snapshot catches the tang out in the open and one clown sitting near the anemone.
Before, you would have read about a yellow surgeonfish-shaped fish swimming mid-water and a small orange and white fish near an anemone. Now the summary can say your Yellow Tang is swimming mid-water and one of your clownfish is hosting near the anemone. And if the cleaner shrimp is tucked behind a rock, the summary says it is not visible in this frame rather than counting it as seen.
Your list is context, not proof
This is the part we were most careful about. Handing a summary a list of six animals is an easy way to get back a confident report of six animals, whether or not any of them are actually in the picture. That would be worse than vagueness. It would be wrong, and it would sound certain.
So the list is advisory. ReefMind may use a name when it can genuinely see the animal in the frame and that animal matches something you recorded. If it cannot see the animal, it will not name it. If it sees something that is not on your list, it says so plainly instead of forcing what it sees onto the nearest entry — lists get out of date, and an animal you never wrote down can still be swimming right there.
Unclear photos stay unclear
Cameras watch tanks through moving water, algae film, glare, and low light. A frame that cannot support an identification does not get one. “I cannot tell from this photo” is still a correct answer, and ReefMind will still give it.
Two more boundaries stay exactly where they were. A summary never lists an animal it cannot see, and it never concludes your tank is empty just because nothing on your list is recognizable in that frame. If your list cannot be read at all for a particular summary, your inventory is treated as unknown rather than as empty.
One tank, one list
A camera summary only ever uses the Livestock list from the exact tank that camera is watching. If you run three systems, the mixed reef’s list never turns up in the frag tank’s summary, and no other reefkeeper’s tank is ever involved in yours.
The connection runs one way, too. Camera summaries read your list. They never write to it, never add animals to it, and never mark anything as seen, sick, or missing. Your Livestock tab stays yours to edit.
What this still will not do
This does not turn a camera summary into a fish identification service, and it does not turn one still frame into a health verdict. ReefMind still will not diagnose disease from a photo, and it will not tell you disease is absent either. If something looks off, the next step is the same as it has always been: go and look at the tank yourself.
Animals you have marked as no longer in the tank are not offered as candidates, so a fish you lost last spring will not reappear in this week’s summary. Quarantined animals are carried with their status, because they may legitimately not be in that frame at all.
Getting the most out of it
On camera-enabled tanks this works with no setup beyond the list you may already keep. The more complete and current your Livestock tab is for a tank, the more specific that tank’s camera summaries can be — a common name, a scientific name, or the nickname you actually use at home.
Then let the summaries do the thing they are good at: telling you what was going on in your reef while you were somewhere else.
Brett Miller
Founder, ReefMind.ai