Product Description

Keeping an aquarium adds beauty and grace to your life. That elegant little world in a glass box can be your respite from the cares of the day and even can lower your blood pressure. It can be a great outlet for your artistic impulses, and educational for your kids. And when it comes to pets, you can’t go wrong with fish. They eat little, require minimal space, and need no training. They never stray, bay at the moon, or leave surprises on your lawn. They’re not prone to rude sniffing, and they won’t chase your letter carrier. And fish never get hairballs or scratch your furniture.

Aquariums For Dummies answers all your fishy questions about keeping an aquarium and makes it easy to get into the swim of things with your own freshwater, brackish, or marine aquarium. You’ll discover how to:

• Choose the right aquarium for you
• Select the best fish
• Create and maintain a healthy aquarium
• Locate good deals on equipment
• Design a dazzling underwater environment

With humor and without a lot of jargon, expert Maddy and Mic Hargrove cover all the bases. They give you step-by-step instructions on how to select equipment and set up your aquarium. And they explore an array of important and fun topics, including:

• Tanks, water sources, substrates and decorations, and water testing
• Live plants for freshwater and brackish aquariums and invertebrates for marine aquariums
• Fish anatomy and physiology (plus a guide to dozens of freshwater coldwater, tropical marine, and brackish fish)
• Choosing a quality dealer and developing a good relationship with them
• Deciding what the right species for you and selecting fish
• Fish diet and nutrition
• Diagnosing and treating diseases in fish
• Breeding fish for fun and profit

A fun and easy guide to creating and maintaining a beautiful aquarium, Aquariums For Dummies is your entrée to the fascinating and rewarding world of fishkeeping.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #406811 in Books
• Published on: 1999-08-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 376 pages

From the Back Cover
"Get this book. Your fish will thank you!" Robert Rice, President, National Fish Conservancy

Step-by-step instructions help you set up your aquarium

The fun and easy guide to creating and maintaining a beautiful aquarium Setting up your first aquarium can be a daunting task. Not only do you need to choose the right fish, but you also have to maintain the right environment for them to flourish. This friendly guide answers all your "fishy" questions — and makes it easy to get into the swim of things!

Discover how to: Choose the right aquarium for you Select the best fish Create and maintain a healthy aquarium Locate good deals on equipment Design a dazzling underwater environment

The Dummies Way^™ Explanations in plain English "Get in, get out" information Icons and other navigational aids Tear-out cheat sheet Top ten lists A dash of humor and fun

Get smart! www.dummies.com Register to win cool prizes Attention pet owners! Get free Dummies Daily^™ e-mail newsletters Sign up for tips on dogs, cats, or birds Keep your pet healthy and content—the Dummies Way^™

About the Author
Maddy Hargrove writes regularly for every major fishkeeping magazine, including Marine Monthly. Mic Hargrove, an expert technical advisor on aquarium equipment and water chemistry, writes for tropical fish magazines.

Customer Reviews

Don't be misled by this book!
Yes, this is a "Dummies" book, and yes I like the "Dummies" series, because they tend to take the mystery out of a complex subject and make it easier to understand.

The problem with this book, as you can tell from the true fishkeepers who have bought it and made reviews, is that much of the information is wrong. "The discus is an easy-to-keep brackish water fish". HAH! It's not brackish water, and it's not recommended for beginners. At least they got the picture right. The fish pictured is a discus.

This is only one of several glaring fishkeeping errors, not to mention grammatical errors.

The "Dummies" Editing staff should be ashamed, as they are misleading people who trust the "Dummies" name to help them with their new hobby. The information "sounds good" and a lot of people really like this book, because it's got some nice humor, easy-to-understand analogies, all the key elements of a good "Dummies" book.

The problem is, the unsuspecting beginner has no idea which of the information is accurate, and which isn't. If you're a beginner, buy the "Complete Idiot's Guide" by Mike Wickham. If you are an experienced fishkeeper and already know what you're doing and just love to collect "Dummies" books, by all means, get this one, pay the publisher to hire better editors, and get a red ink pen and test your knowledge.

I'd give this book 3 stars overall as a book goes. It's amusing, it has good information (if you can tell which information is good), and it's fun. The reason for its 1-star rating is because it's marketed for beginners and beginners can't tell which paragraph they happen to be reading is right, and which one is completely wrong.

If a second edition comes out, buy it. I have to assume that the authors know by now what mistakes they've made and would be all to happy to correct them if given a chance.

Dummed Down Dummies
It's a really good book - filled with all the information you need to know to starting up your aqaurium. I found it really dumed-down though (I suppose good if you know nothing about fish) so I found it really difficult to sit to down & read the whole thing. Alot more technical information then on fish themselves - best place to find good advice on filters. Overall I'm glad I bought it - but it's not the staple of my fish-book collection.

Fun to read, good for beginners.
I bought this book as a freshwater aquarist returning to the hobby after a 12-year hiatus. For beginners, it's a great book - the writing is funny, the information is useful, and it covers a good range of topics. Topics include: step-by-step instructions for setting up an aquarium, basic fish anatomy, water chemistry information, information on the nitrogen cycle (i.e., how a tank's ecosystem gets started), and a basic description of most fish diseases & parasites, along with frequently-used cures. It also includes a list of fish that *aren't* for beginners, which is helpful, as many stores that stock fish don't have knowledgeable staff on-hand when you go to buy your fish. The writing also makes light of some of the more frustrating problems aquarists encounter (i.e., fish jumping out of the tank, etc.), which is bound to make any beginner feel less incompetent when these things almost inevitably happen.

As with most Dummies books, you will need to add other books to your library, but this is a good one to start with.