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A usefull tool in the aquarist library
The bulk book is just hundreds of photographs of fish fallowed by basic information about the fish therein. It is organized by fish family as many things are in the aquarium hobby. The book has three Indexes, fish alphabetized by scientific name, fish alphabetized by common name, and an index for the text portion of the book, and I think that is brilliant. The photos are a tiny bit grainy however the photos are taken in such a way that the fish in the picture are very detailed, and you could easily use this book to identify an unknown fish. There is information about many common plants, the book also has short basic sections about health, breeding, maintenance, equipment, the stuff that is in most fish books, etc. My one major complaint is I wish there was more information about each individual fish such as sexual dimorphism, water chemistry, and breeding, also the common names are not with the photos only the scientific names are so they must be cross-referenced in the index. I think many people have given this book a bad review simply because it comes so highly recommended that people expect it to be allot more than it is. its no holy grail of the fish books, far from it, but I think for what it is it does good.
[Tuesday, September 16, 2008]
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A good book for aquarium fish lovers
Nice big book with lots of nice pictures. My daughter is very interested and pretty knowledgeable of aquarium fish and found this book useful.
[Friday, January 18, 2008]
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Handy and Complete
Definitely a very good reference guide for any freshwater enthusiast. The mini-atlas has every freshwater species beautifully diplayed in color photo. Under each color photo is a group of symbols. These symbols are defined in the book itself. The symbols convey what water conditions are appropriate, size of tank, food, swimming level, breeding type and level of aggression. The mini-atlas also has separate chapters on breeding, fish diseases, aquarium plants and tank set-up.
The only negative point is that each fish is called by its scientific name. If you desire to know the common name (the name used in aquarium shops) you have to go to the back of the book and search an index of scientific names which then refers to the common name. This process is a bit cumbersome.
All in all, this book is a nice addition to one's personal freshwater library. It's very complete and I find myself referring to it often.
[Friday, April 29, 2005]
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