Good Books

[locust267]

Just wondering what books on tropical fish and aquariums make for a good read.

I have just read through Freshwater fish for dummies and it's a really easy read, has all the basic info, well worth new people to the hobby reading. The only bad points are that it is a little too user friendly in terms of using silly "hip" phrases etc. Have noticed a few minor contradictions to other advice and it's not converted from US info to UK info - but that's just me being picky.

Would be good if maybe we could get a topic going on this.

I would really like more of an encyclopedia that is accurate and another book that has good photos of each fish and a good description of care and history etc.

 

[Corleone]

Not sure if they're available in the UK, but Animal Planet (one of Discovery Channel's cable channels) has a series of pretty good beginner pet books out. They're the only ones I've seen that cover fishless cycling, and they're a bit more through about compatibility and disease identification/treatment than others I've read. For fish, there's a general book, and then a few more specific ones about cichlids, goldfish, and tropical fish.

Also, get a species book or two - they're basically a gallery of pictures and basic information about many fish. They're nice to look at, make good coffee table books, and I don't think I could have kept my sanity through a fishless cycle without one to page through while looking at my empty tank.

 

[CitizenErased]

I'm new to the hobby and bought these two books from Amazon UK

Setting Up A Tropical Aquarium
Complete Encyclopedia Tropical Fish

Hope that helps

 

[rabbut]

There are only a few "good" books out there that contain all the information that is currently up-to-date. In general, somebooks can be as much as 15-30 years out-of-date in a hobby where you are out of date by not keeping any fish for a year.... Look for realy modern printes. I have never seen any books talk through a fishless cycle within, and most don't even fully cover fish-in cycling and water chemistaory, the latter being an absolute basic IMO.

Most books to be only have uses for looking up an unformiliar fish, for max size E.T.C Most other info in them is so out-of-date that it usualy isn't worth dealing with. If you wnt to look up fish stats in a shop, they are invaluable, for anything else, you need to find something a little more up to date IMO

All the best
Rabbut