Aquarium Fish

by Ulrich Schliewen

A very nice book. This one focuses on creating biotope aquariums, where you assemble the same plants and fish that would live together in nature (or as close as you can get to that). It gets very detailed into the topics of water chemistry and the nitrogen cycle, also has lots of information on how various kinds of fishes breed. There's a nice diagram on fish anatomy and physical adaptations to different lifestyles in their various habitats. The section on plants was informative, but too brief for my taste, and not enough pictures there. Overall the photographs in the book are excellent. One different feature it had was that the glossary of terms was placed in the center of the book. True, it was easily found because the pages are blue, but I found the placement odd.

The second half of the book highlights many popular (as well some more uncommon and difficult-to-keep) species (over two hundred) and gives the usual data on their needs and care. I browsed through this section, again reading the details on those that would be okay in my particular aquarium, but enjoying the beautiful shapes and colors of all the others, and reading those that had interesting facts (like about the fish that can conduct electricity, or the tetra that deposits its eggs on leaves suspended above the water, or the cichlid that in the wild, eats other fishes' eyeballs).

This is one I would definitely consider adding to my own collection. It's also a Barron's book, but significantly larger and more detailed in both text and photos, than the others I've encountered at the library.

Rating: 4/5    160 pages, 1991