Mini Encyclopedia of the Tropical Aquarium - Gina Sandford

The book is specifically for people whom already have or would like a tropical aquarium. The book is a mini encyclopedia packed with sensible advice and practical guidance from setting up an aquarium to choosing the best fishes.

The book starts off with information on how to choose a tank & stand and how to install it. The information is very detailed and includes detailed diagrams and pictures. It also tells you how to install internal filters in the tank and choosing and preparing wood and rocks for the tank. This may all sound very simple, how-ever it states what wood types are best to use for the tank and what important factors they have for the fish. The books describes the different types of rocks you can use for the tank and whereabouts to place them within the tank. The book goes on to tell you how to treat the water ready for the tank and how to install plants into the aquarium. This information is very useful and I found it very helpful when learning how to set up a tank for the first time. Although the pages in the book are small it goes into detailed information.

About a quarter of the way through the book it gives you information about the fish on health care, breeding and how to do routine maintenance on the tank such as cleaning the filter. A lot of this sounds complicated, how-ever as it goes into a lot of details it’s easy to follow.

Half way through the book is starts to give you a lot more information about the different types of fish you can have in your tank. From here on, each page is dedicated to a different fish and provides information such as ideal conditions, breeding and other information about the fish. There is also bright, colourful pictures of the fish and states the fish origin. All this information is very helpful as it states how easy the fish are to look after and what sort of tanks they like to live in. This can include and aquarium with lots of plants or an aquarium with places for the fish to hide. It also tells you what food is best to feed the fish to ensure they stay healthy.

At the back of the book is an index, which is great if you want to look up a specific type of fish and read information about it. The index is easy to use and is a quicker way of finding out information.

I read all the information about setting up a tank and maintaining it. I didn’t read all the information about the fish but instead went into my local fish shop to look at fish. The one’s I liked the look of I then came home to read about them in the book, this gave me all the information I needed and helped me to decide whether to purchase the fish or not. The book is really easy to follow and I would highly recommend it to others who are trying to set up a tropical aquarium for the first time.

You can buy this book on amazon from about £6.79 new and £2.79 used.

(review may also appear on dooyoo)