Great step-by-step guide for beginners

Being a fresh water aquarium hobbist since I was 6 years old, I always wanted to start a marine aquarium but was always afraid, because I always heard about the far higher costs, the "cycling time" that meant that you could insert new fishes only after one month you setup your system, and the far more complicated maintenance. But this book demystified everything for me.

It is a step-by-step guide on how to setup your first salt water aquarium without entering into unecessary explanations. Following this book you can build your own system and have fishes in it in less than a week -- and I am counting here the time for you to visit some stores to research prices and getting acquainted with the products you will have to buy.

The quality of the book is top-notch: excellent paper, excellent design, hard-cover. The problem, though, is that it lacks more illustrations and some are very deceitful. It seems that the author just wrote the text and the publishing house had to insert some pictures to go along. So sometimes there are some boxes alerting the reader on some fishes to avoid and the publisher put a picture of a fish there to illustrate, problem is that it isn't from the fish the author is talking about!

I could setup my first salt water tank following the steps presented in this book but I changed some stuff that the author failed to mention:

1. Filter: he suggests two hang-on wet/dry filters and no word is given to canister filters, which require less maintenance and are quieter. I chose the later.

2. Illumination: he says only to put two lamps without explaining the detials of which kind of lamp you should use. I've done my research and for the kind of system he recommends (fish with live rock a.k.a. Berlin system) you should use one 5500º K or 6500º K lamp plus a blue "Actinic". He also failed to mention that you should buy a timer to automatically turn on and off the lamps (the first one should be turned on for 8 hours/day and the second one should be turned on for 12 hours/day).

3. Electrical connection: failed to mention that you need to have a ground-fault interruptor (a.k.a. GFCI); I bougth mine at Home Depot.

These are the only three things that I changed from what is written on the book. I also bought two other great books for choosing fishes and invertebrates and believe me, all other books are far harder to follow that this little but effective guide.

Another problem with this books is that the author constantly says that he will explain how to do a "fresh water dip" on Chapter 7 and how this is the most important thing for preventing diseases, however in nowhere in the book (including Chapter 7) this procedure is taught. I had to learn how to do this from another book (The Conscientious Marine Aquarist).

[Sunday, September 07, 2008]

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