One man's Aquarium Building obsession
Written: Jan 03 '05 (Updated Jan 03 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great source of information on a great deal of varieties of fish.
Cons: Makes you feel stupid if you had a tank before.
The Bottom Line: Great overall picture on how to do virtually everything with an aquarium no matter what type of aquarium you want to create.
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| biscuitfarmer's Full Review: Gina Sandford - Aquarium Owner's Manual |
There's been an ongoing struggle within my household over the last three years regarding having an aquarium. While my wife and I don't disagree on having an aquarium, we do disagree on whether or not I should build one. For the past probably 10 years, I have been absolutely obsessed with building an aquarium, building ponds, pretty much anything that can house animal life and be easily viewable to us in our home. So, being that I was so determined, I decided that I needed to read up and become more knowledgeable about the topic, so that I could slowly convince my wife of the idea. One of the books that I purchased was the Aquarium Owner's Manual.
Information Provided
The information within the book I found to be extremely easy to understand and very well presented. It talks about a great deal of different varieties of fish and other aquarium creatures. There's a great bit of information on the different styles of tanks from brackish water (salt water/fresh water mix), to saltwater, to freshwater.
Everything in the book is presented so even those that don't have a full grasp of the language could easily read it. I'm thinking that it's presented at a 6th grade reading level.
Chapters
Introduction
This section describes the history of fishkeeping, from it's roots in culture, how it became popular, and what types of fish were original prized. It also goes into the philosophies of fish and how to understand their behavior.
This section is definitely a good way to ease yourself into the book and the topic at hand. Since we are talking about living creatures, I think every aspect of learning about the creatures that you are caring for is absolutely important, no matter how insignificant it may seem.
Freshwater and Brackish-water Aquarium
This section goes to talk about how to setup a freshwater and a brachkish-water tank. There are different types of filters that it talks about, different styles of tanks that can be used. It even goes into full detail on the substrate (the material on the bottom) that can be used. It also into great care details for anabantids, catfish, characins, cichlids, cyprinids, loaches, killifish, livebearers, raindbowfish, coldwater fish, brackish-water fish, and freshwater plants.
The Marine Aquarium
The Marine aquarium talks a lot about the popular salt water tanks. While they are extremely difficult to care for, and most importantly expensive, there are alot of different options when it comes to a salt water tank and this goes into great deal about the different aspects of it. This section is extremely helping in choosing fish that will live well together, how to feed them, different ways to breed them, and different setups for breeding tanks, standard tanks, and the like.
Creating a home aquarium
This section is very important for anyone that is looking to start their own aquarium as it goes into the important little details. Things like what type of tank to get along with the size of stand that you are going to need to support it. Other things such as the filter, air pumps, heaters and coolers, lighting, substrates, water, and decor are also discussed. There are a lot of things that I learned about filtration, that I didn't know before. Most of the things in this section, where you use them or not, can help you make good decisions about the future or type of tank that you want to create.
There is also a section that talks about 11 different styles of tank setup. This of course depends upon the types of animals you wish to inhabit your aquarium, but it goes through the different designs, what type of fish you would want to place in each type of tank, and how to keep it healthy.
Caring for your fish
This is the section that tells you how to condition the water before purchasing your fish. The initial introduction of the fish to each other is also quite important in this chapter and tells how to do it sucessfully.
Other topics that were of great help to me, that I didn't know with the last tanks that I owned were things about the water management, how to keep the aquarium clean and things like that. I always just let the filter do all of the work, but the book goes into details on why one style of filter isn't going to be able to clean the entire tank and sometimes it takes a little one on one cleaning in order to fully do the job.
Another thing that I was unaware of, before reading this book were the different types of food for different fish. I knew that the Oscars I had ate these little balls of food and the rest ate flakes and that's all that I knew. Apparently there's a lot more to fish food than I actually considered before, which explains why I had so many problems with past tanks.
Overview
This is the best book that I was able to find that covered everything I wanted to know about fish from breeding, to feeding, to the actual construction of my own aquarium. They cover things that I didn't even know would be an issue when trying to raise fish on my own.
The book is extremely well written, so even the most simple minded can understand, and it's layed out extremely well, so that you can easily find what you are looking for, without having to dig far for it.
If you don't know a thing about fish, but want to have an aquarium, this book is definitely the best way to go that I can think of. It pretty much covers everything that I can think of, that would possibly be important.
Recommended:
Yes
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