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| Used | |
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| $38.93 | Used
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| | Customer Reviews: | | | Average Customer Review: ( 14 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 17 found the following review helpful:
 Not too shoddy Aug 24, 2007
By Ennil Pwysau
Some good work has gone into the production of this book, and there are plenty of helpful hints for the beginning aquarist, especially on the simple to read section on setting up your aquarium. There is a section on plants as well as a large section on some common fish breeds. However, in order to make the fish and plant sections include more species, the detail becomes a little lacking, so for specifics, get another more specialised book. For generalities, get this one.
13 of 13 found the following review helpful:
 Superb tropical fish book!!! Oct 15, 2009
By Thomas P.
"Tom P."
I am currently 58 years young and have been into tropical fish ever since I was in the 5th grade. I occasionally purchase tropical fish books, enjoying looking at the various species and reading about them, even though I do not have most of them. I was very delighted with this particular book. Excellent illustrations of many breeds, with some good summary material with each one. Great information for beginners at the front of the book; and a lot of plants covered, with very helpful tips regarding them. Even the illustrations for the plants were excellent! One really gets one's money's worth with this book; it seems that it should cost a lot more than it actually does... a rarity in this day and age! Not a lot of specific information on temperature ranges for each species was provided, but you can easily get that in other books or on the web.
12 of 13 found the following review helpful:
Great book... Nov 30, 2007
By Vanessa P.
...for beginners and advanced alike. This book offers basic information on a wide variety of plant and fish species. Even has a small section about mormyrids which are rarely talked about in other books. The photographs are beautiful and very detailed.
Previous poster may do well to actually take a look at the book instead of getting caught up in wording of other reviews.
Highly recommend this book to anyone interested in freshwater aquariums.
7 of 8 found the following review helpful:
 Not so complete.. at all Jul 29, 2010
By HB
Really? I have to say I'm a little surprised at the higher ratings this book has received. Where to begin?
Pros:
- Hardcover.
- Full colour, decent sized, [mostly] high quality photos.
- The plant section (about 64 pages) has some good photos and descriptions.
- The fish are sorted by family, with a colour coded bar across the top of each page for quick scanning.
Get ready - here are the Cons:
- The disease section is really lacking; about 3 pages with ONE photo- a Neon Tetra with dropsy (as if there's ever confusion as to what a bloated belly might look like- why not pictures showing the difference between ich and velvet?)
- Fish choices. Understandably (for space constraints), not all freshwater fish are represented. However, the choices in fish represented seem extraordinarily inconsistent. I have to wonder if the author was going for more of the "wow" factor than a reasonable array of creatures. Arowanas, for instance, receive a full page unto themselves. Frankly, somebody who is set up to be housing an Arowana is far beyond needing a book like this. Tetraodontidae (Puffer fish) gets three pages. Yes, it's a remarkable fish- but three pages is not enough information to work off of alone, and in the meantime takes away space that could have been used more wisely.
- The invertebrates section. Why bother? 12 pages, not enough information, sorely lacking in pictures, and a lot of fluff.
- Breeding. 5 pages. Again- why bother? Not enough to work off of; just enough to let you know that you're going to have to purchase another book.
- Fish "stats". These are REALLY lacking, and the inexcusable dealbreaker in my opinion. No water specifications (temperatures, acidity, hardness, etc). Sometimes you can go to the beginning of the section and read the blurb about the family to sleuth out temperature, etc. This proves to be inconsistent and inconvenient though.
- Fish descriptions. Inconsistent! Terribly so. One description includes breeding information, the next does not. One description mentions the fish as having a personality in addition to it's physical characteristics, the next focuses only on colouration. Crucial bits of knowledge are left out- not one Loach description mentions the need for a tank cover.
I haven't actually gone and counted how many fish/plants are shown in this book (so I may be incorrect) - but I have a feeling that the claim of "A comprehensive reference guide to more than 600 freshwater fish and plants" is backed up NOT by 600 individual descriptions, but by maybe 300-400 descriptions; the other 200-300 species being counted from classification lists with no descriptions or photos.
This guide had a lot of possibility, but it seems that the author was so caught up in filler material trying to make it "complete" that a lot of important detail was neglected or left out completely. I'm not saying it's awful, but the title is very misleading - it's not complete, and I certainly wouldn't recommend it as a first book for someone looking to get started in aquariums. I get so frustrated when I need to refer to my books and find this one - my most recent purchase. The fact that I always turn to my 1988, technologically outdated library-book-sale guide and find more complete, concise, easy to find information EVERY time is a definite red flag. Save yourself the let down and skip this one!
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Great book - quite informative Apr 14, 2011
By T. Vanover
"Perpet Student"
I did buy this book for my partner who is new to the tropical fish hobby and I'm not ready to put it back on his bookshelf. The book provides more than an adequate introduction to the overall tropical fish hobby. I found this book to be very helpful as it provides insight to many aspects of the hobby! No it is not a comprehensive manual of tropical fish species, disease, breeding, and etc. There are other books if you're seeking complete information on those subjects.
The photos of the fish are very good and its easy to identify what a fish really looks like. I find the notation of a series of bubbles in the upper right corner of the picture very very helpful in easily seeing if the pictured organism is easy or difficult to maintain. This book also lists the binomial and common name in a common index. It also includes fresh water mollusks, which I haven't seen very often in other fish books.
I've had tropical fish for 15+ yrs and have reviewed many fish books over the years. I'm very happy to 'include' this reference book in my collection of 20+ yr old fish books. Again, if you're seeking specifics on breeding, disease, comprehensive species listing you'll need more than just one book.
See all 14 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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