The Aqualog book and my book (which should be out very soon -- it's being sent off the printers next week) are very different. The Aqualog book is for those aquarists who already know the basics. It is basically a group-by-group review of the brackish water fishes: gobies, monos, archers, and so on. On the one hand it covers some really unusual stuff either messed up or ignored in other books. Flatfish and toadfish, for example. On the other hand, it only covers stuff that can be kept at ~SG 1.010, which leaves out a lot of low-end brackish stuff like killifish, cichlids, and livebearers. It also has a weird focus in some ways, with rather a lot on obscure plants and algae you'll never see, and remarkably little on brackish-tolerant plants that are common in the trade. It's main problem is that it is short: it really leaves you wanting more. The author adds some pictures at the back of things he doesn't have space to talk about -- but the're things I want him to talk about! Threadfish, freshwater snappers, pipefish, and so on.
The book I edited is similar in some ways but being bigger (430-odd pages, 14 chapters) goes into more depth. It also works around a range of salinities, from low-end stuff at 1.003 through to near-marine. Where the Aqualog book is mostly about identifying things, our book has few oddballs but brings in more of the common stuff -- kribs, Florida flagfish, livebearers, and so on -- that are left out of the Aqualog book. Another difference is that many of the chapters were produced by experts in the field: so the mudskippers section is done by someone who's collected and kept them for 20 years, the goby section is by a goby scientist who breeds them, and so on. Yet another difference is that the book is focused very much on building community aquaria rather than keeping single species. So for each species there is a data box listing things like preferred salinity, temperament, food, specific problems, and so on. Each chapter has ideas for community tanks based around certain themes.
Anyway, in the meantime, the following are a list of book that I consider to be more or less useful. Some are excellent, like the Aqualog brackish book, but others are a bit more limited. The Michael Gos book is outdated in many ways, though still a fun read, and Chris Ralph's pufferfish book is very much a primer rather than a definitive account, and suffers by comparison with the Aqualog pufferfish book.
- Brackish Aquaria, by Michael Gos, published by TFH, 1979, ISBN 0-876665199
- Brackish Water Fishes, by Frank Schäfer, published by Aqualog Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-93602782-X
- Brackish Water Fishes, edited by Neale Monks, published by TFH, 2006, ISBN 0-793805643
- Aquarium Atlas (vol. 1), by Rüdiger Riehl & Hans Baensch, published by Mergus, 1987, ISBN 3-882440503 (This book has been revised numerous times, and additional volumes are also available)
- Complete Aquarium, by Peter Scott, published by Dorling Kindersley, 1995, ISBN 0-789400138
- Pufferfish, by Chris Ralph, published by Interpet, 2003, ISBN 1-860542336
- The puffers of fresh and brackish waters, by Klaus Ebert, published by Aqualog Verlag, 2001, ISBN 3-931702-60-X
Cheers,
Neale
/www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...ER&v=glance
