This is a very nice book for the person just starting out or thinking about starting a marine tank. It has nice colorful pictures and even describes lighting spectrum and why they are needed for corals. Most of the information is in a condensed and easy to read format. Not a real "in depth read" but a great starter book with an entire section just getting you acquainted with the different types of marine fish and invertebrates for the tropical marine aquarium

 

Part 1 - practical section

Chapters

1. why keep marine fish? including expenses

2. Tank Selection and setup

3. temperature control

4. Lighting and very good spectrum explanations

5. Mixing water - this is also a very good explanation! Includes Osmoregulation in saltwater and freshwater species ( not something you see often )

6. Filtration systems

7. Creating habitats and aquascaping

8. Setting up the aquarium

9. Choosing and introducing fish including compatibility issues

10. Feeding

11. regular maintenance and chemical testing

12 breeding Marine fish- descriptions on several species including Cardinal fish, Seahorses and Anenomefish

13. health care - with a sickness chart

Part 2 is a species guide starts at page 60

Lots of great photography and profiles on tropical marine fish page 61 to 185

Page 186 continues the species guide with tropical invertebrates

Page 194 gets into cold water fish and invertebrates

page 200 starts the glossary and index 

 

 

This is only a 200 page book, but it is a huge size. About 14 inches tall which is my only complaint( I like smaller books) , yet I believe they did it this way to incorporate all the cool graphics inside the book and keep the topics cohesive

 

 

 

This was the first book I bought at a local book store. All I can say, is there is very little information and the pictures look like they were drawn with colored pencils. Yuck. save your $20

This is a nice little 92 page paper back book that gives a broad yet superficial introduction to aquarium plant keeping. I can't say to much more than that except that it does have about 90 full color photos and some ideas with planting patterns for good aquascaping techniques. The Fertilization advice was sound, but the book did not go into depth about specific nutrient levels when compared to CO2 and light input. So while this book confirmed what I already knew about that important topic, it left me wanting to rewrite the book putting in specific recommendations.

I do recommend this inexpensive little book as a first read for newbie jungle tank people. You are only out a few dollars and the short read can be helpful to get a broad perspective on the topic.

This is the companion Photo Atlas that goes along with the 1st 5 books. Only the first 4 atlas books are in English. # 5 and #6 are still only in German.

This book is not a necessity, but if you are looking to identify fish quicker, then this book along with it's comprehensive index will make wading through the 1st 5 books much easier. Once you locate what you are looking for, it will tell you a little and also tell you in what book and what page to look for more detailed information. Every independent fish store should have this book as a minimum. Not every fish ( like plecos) are listed, but this book gets you a long ways there. For some catfish like Plecos, you might find Aqualog books to be a bit easier to use even though many of those are outdated or even wrong when compared to DATZ

Thumbs up on this photo index

This series of books are best when viewed as a single resource.  They are now lowering in Price. I got the first 3 vols at $20 each and considering they were originally in the $60 range when new, that seemed like a great deal. The paperback versions are less expansive than the ones I have in hardback.

 

Book one is mostly profiling 600 species of the most common freshwater species kept in aquariums, but the book starts out with an in depth lesson in the science of fish keeping.. There are color photos of everything including some very stunning aquarium cabinetry and planted tanks.Then it goes on to explain the details of water chemistry and nitrification. Some of the nitrification info is outdated, but the concepts are sound.. The next two sections are technology and then plants. These sections are much more in depth than most aquarium books on the market. The plant section has color photos and profiles of  about 100 plant species. The fish section is next ( much of the book and then comes care and disease sections. The disease section is very large, but lacks great photo examples. Lots of microscope drawings though.

 

If you were to only buy 1 single freshwater book, then this is the book you should have. It is the most complete book of the series covering all topics, but because of that has a shorter profile list of only 600 are shown. The color photos of the fish are perfect.

 

Book 2 continues on where Book one of this series was somewhat lacking.

 there are 150 more plant profiles complete with great color photos, and plant nutrient section. An algae section describing algae parameters and possible controls.The final section contains more than 850 more fish profiles. None of the plant or fish profiles repeat in any of these books which was something I was afraid of when buying them.

 

Highly recommended- I am so impressed with this series of books.

Book three of this series adds even further to the complete work that is the project of collecting every bit of info there is on all aquarium fish and plants and compiling it into a single series of books. Book 3 has 900 more fish profiles and 80 more plant species ( all with color photos)  With the third book, nearly all plant species of interest to the aquarium hobby have been presented.

This is also the first book to present those plants sold in stores for aquariums that are the "unsuitable aquarium plants such as Draceana that some people get from their local fish store. This book is mostly Profiles and short on Information of other types. Those are mostly covered in the first two books and they left the page space for more photos and profiles.

 

Get the 1st two books in the series before this one, but this one has a lot of the newer fish on the market like the Bolivian ram.

 

This is the newest book translated to English in the series and is still expensive at $65. I found it to be mostly odd ball fish with a few standards missed in the first three volumes tossed in. All the common plants were completed in the first three volumes, so this book is 700 new fish species most of which are not carried in any other books because they were recently introduced to the aquarium hobby. There is a volume 5 and 6 in German right now, so they must go into depth more fully into the Loricaridae fish because they missed a lot of them in the first books. Which may have been intentional since they keep changing the names and organization of the Plecos.

 

Once you have the other 3 books+ the Photo Index you will find it hard to resist not buying this book, but I would advise waiting on this book until the price drops some. It is worth $20, but not the $65 it is going for now.

 

Rumor has it, that Vols 5 and 6 will not ever be translated into English, which is too bad.

670 color photos and over 600 invertabrates

sponges, hydrozoans, corals, gastropods,and nudibranch's

Vol 1 is the biggest of the 1st three volumes at 1215 pages. Included is about 1000 fish and invertebrates. This volume also introduces you to the setup, care and maintenance of the Marine Aquarium complete with in depth water chemistry lessons. Caullerpa and other marine algae are explained. Crustaceans, sea anemones and fishes consist of the total of 1000 profiles.

 

I do not have this book yet, but for anyone interested in the marine tank, this sounds like the best book. If it follows in the freshwater series then  it is.

 

all three of these vols are $28 each at www.fishbookstore.com

500 species and about 530 color photos. This volume is page numbered to continue on where Vol 2 left off. This Vol has the bivalves,squid, octopi, bristleworms, sea stars, sea urchins,sea cucumbers, and tunicates

This is a nice little book that I picked up used for a few dollars, but if you want a real book with much more info, spend the extra cash and get the Mergus Cichlid Atlas Vol 1.

revised edition 1997, this tiny little gem of a book has some neat little tips for people that want to try to breed fishes as well as a disease section with excellent photos. The breeding section has limited species specific info, but they give you excellent pictures of each type of breeding technique as well as examples of what to feed the fish when they hatch. It also does a good job describing tanks setups for breeding.

 

For a lower cost book this one is worth trying out. I even learned a few new interesting things and I have bred all sorts of fish for years

This is a pocket profile guide to Marine tropical fish. When I bought this book I did not know that Baesch atlas series also had marine books and I intend to collect those next. This pocket book has 500 profiles with great pictures, Not a bad little book and very clear to read and browse through

This Book is a wonderful introduction to many of the smaller dwarf Cichlids from South America. True to the Mergus press Atlas motif, this book describes all sorts of neat things about the environment in the Amazon as well as how to Identify races of Apistogramma and other close relative like the Rams . It is a 1,300 page book where the 1st 250 pages  are dedicated to everything from Environmental protection to specimen collection techniques. It made for a very interesting read and it was the first time that I was aware that fungus and not bacteria were responsible for the nitrogen cycle in some water holes.

 

Great book For people interested in the dwarf Cichlids of South America. Lots of full color photos showing Males and females of each species where applicable. I am told by Mike Wise at www.apistogramma.com that the identification key at the start of the book is not the preferred method