Tropical Aquarium Fish

Comprehensive Edition
by Dr. Chris Andrews and Dr. Ulrich Baensch

General book on fishkeeping, an old version. It was kind of amusing to see hairstyles and decor in the photographs of kids leaning over their aquariums, that I recall from middle school years, several decades ago now. Most of the information about setup and maintenance was not new to me, but I kind of liked reading it anyway. I was a little surprised at some of the recommendations- such as running a light ten to fourteen hours a day- that seems way too much to me and I also noticed that lots of the photos of fish had serious algae in the background. Either someone didn't care about finding pictures of fish in clean living conditions for the publication, or it was just norm and accepted to have so much algae in your tank back then. One of the authors here invented tetra flake food, so it's no surprise that for each species profiled in the book, his products were listed as the best foods. Live and frozen foods were dismissed, for the risk of carrying disease. I think you'll find it different now- at least at the places I frequent online, many aquarists opine that live foods are best for the fishes, dried and flake food being of poorer quality overall. Also I was astonished to read a description on how to deal with unwanted snails in an aquarium- it involved stripping the ends of wires attached to a battery and dangling the exposed copper ends into the tank. What.

So those were things that jumped out at me, but really it is a standard book. Tells about essential equipment and how to set it up, explains the nitrogen cycle, how to introduce fish slowly, the benefits of growing live plants, dealing with vacation absence, identifying major diseases and how to attempt breeding certain species. But the majority of the book- over three quarters of it- is pages of species profiles. More than two hundred fishes are shown here and although the pictures are older and not always of the best clarity, I enjoyed looking through them. There were some fish in there that aren't popular now and I've never actually seen them in shops, some rare ones are mentioned and others are interesting because I recognize them even though their common names and appearance have changed through selective breeding, since this book was published.

Rating: 3/5       240 pages, 1993