77 of 80 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Fast track to killing fish and getting burned out, October 31, 2002
This review is from: Aquariums for Dummies (Paperback)
Too many inaccuracies to mention them all, but I will cite a few that stood out to me and how a beginning aquarist can find themselves burned out from this hobby after spending lots of money on equipment and fish only to see them die because they followed advice/assumptions made by this book.
The book tries to cover freshwater, brackish and marine (saltwater) aquariums simultaneously, but seems to be more focused on freshwater than anything else. I am a saltwater aquarist and I know very little about brackish or freshwater fishkeeping, but based on the misinformation on saltwater aquariums and fish, I would never follow any advice from this book - while there are many true/factual statements, I am not willing to roll the dice to see which ones are correct or incorrect.
There is a color photo of a yellow-bellied damselfish in the book w/ the caption "Fiji Blue Devil." Blue Devils, aka "Blue Damsels" are intense blue all over and do not have yellow scales. The text concerning blue devils say that they are just called 'devils' but don't act that way. That is simply untrue. I've had 3 blue devils and and each one behaved wonderfully until they went through their growth spurt. They became very aggressive and bit fins and scales off of other fish. Full adults don't get any bigger than an adult's thumb, but they can harass and irreperably damage other fish, stressing them out and shortening their lives. Blue devils are beautiful fish and very inexpensive - but not worth it if they are destroying your other fish. There is a saying in the aquarium trade - "if damsels were as big as sharks, sharks would hide behind rocks." Not all damsels are that aggressive. Some like the yellow tailed damsel can get along very peacably with other inhabitants. This misinformation in just a couple of paragraphs can cost you a lot of heartache and money.
There is also a mention of a Green Mandarin Goby and a photo of one... just stating that it's a beautiful fish. Mandarins (green or spotted variety) should NEVER be bought by beginners. In my opinion, they are one of the most beautiful fish in the trade, but 99% of the time, they die of starvation within 7 days of purchase. They are slow fish and they do not eat prepared foods. They eat bristle worms and other very tiny lifeforms that live in the substrate (they are bottom feeders). These fish are not only beautful, but expensive. I made these mistakes the hard way, following the advice of salespeople in aquarium stores who care more about getting your money than the welfare of your pets. A book that is supposed to be for beginners should not repeat the same misinformation.
One of the foods they cite as good for marine fish is brine shrimp. This is only partially true. Brine shrimp are appetizing to fish, but have almost no nutrional value by themselves. Hobbyists should only get spirulina-enriched brine shrimp instead of brine shrip alone - and this is not mentioned.
The information on live food is too brief and misleading. Live feeder guppies (freshwater) should NEVER be fed to marine fish... how would marine fish ever encounter fresh waterfish in the wild?! Freshwater fish are too fatty and too much feeding of freshwater fish to marine animals will lead to fatty liver disease which results in death. This is not mentioned. Also not mentioned is that feeding live food will increase the hunting instincts of your fish and make them more aggressive towards each other. Keeping your fish on prepared/frozen foods in lieu of live is the way to go.
The authors also say that you can periodically give your fish strips of cooked lean meat and potatoes. What!?!?! Find me a fish that can hunt down a cow and dig up a potato and cook them both - and I'll change my level of disgust with this information. Just because a particular species of fish might be an omnivore does not mean that ANY type of meat will suffice. This also gives the impression that cooked shrimp could be given. No one should be cooking for their fish. Fish eat aquatic plants and/or animals and fish do not cook. They also do not eat land mammals or spuds. Cooked foods such as these will also greatly foul the water.
The chapter on water sources doesn't even mention Reverse Osmosis or Deionization. Their advice is to get the "inexpensive" bottled water. Even cheap bottled water can get pricey when you're talking about filling up a 55 gal tank, not to mention water changes each month. A one time cost of getting an RO or RO/DI filter can make water cost you about 6 cents a gallon instead of paying upwards of a dollar a gallon.
More than half of new aquarists get out of the hobby within the first year because they blow too much money on garbage because they followed really bad advice and suffered through dying fish, algae blooms and bad pumps & filters. There are some good aquarium books out there, but this is surely not one of them.
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53 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A bit disappointed, redundant, 2.5 stars, January 23, 2000
This review is from: Aquariums for Dummies (Paperback)
I own a LOT of dummies books! I love most of them but, unfortunately, it looks like the company is getting a little too focused on quickly cranking out funny books while allowing their overall content to suffer. This I believe is one of the most basic problems with this book. It is VERY redundant, contains many editing mistakes, is missing the most basic description of the nitrogen cycle and takes several hundreds of pages to get to the point. The book does contain vital reference information, but tends to scatter it in several different chapters, instead of neatly organizing it in one appendix. I have found, in several cases, MORE useful information from the book titled "Aquarium FISH" published by DK. This is a reference book not intended to teach you on how to setup an aquarium, and it does a better job of providing the essential information you need to start an aquarium. By the way... this book makes a big mistake in trying to cover both freshwater and saltwater aquariums. Because of this the book become more of a mess and more confusing... Given all the negatives I have typed, if you intend on starting a freshwater system, this book does contain most of the pieces, it just takes way to long to get to the point (like this review), and completely misses the vital nitrogen cycle!
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31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not quite ready for prime time, September 1, 1999
This review is from: Aquariums for Dummies (Paperback)
If you're a beginner, do yourself a favor and buy a copy of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Freshwater Aquariums" instead of this book.
This one was second to market, and it appears as though it was rushed in an attempt to get it out. It is filled with factual errors ("length x width x height = capacity in gallons" page 26), meaningless advice (the discussion on substrate size uses "large" and "medium" without quantifying those terms, then goes on to recommend 1/8" particles as "best for most setups" without discussing what the fish or plants may prefer), editing errors (the same phrase is occasionally repeated, as on the page 86-87 break), and disorganized information (pH and the nitrogen cycle are discussed well before these terms are explained).
The examples I've listed above are not the only ones I've found. But perhaps the biggest complaint I have with this book is that it tries to cover too much. Beginners shouldn't be setting up a saltwater aquarium as their introduction to the hobby, and since this book covers both fresh and saltwater setups it is filled with excess information that is useless to a beginner.
The people that publish the "Idiots Guide" series, which are in direct competition with the "Dummies" guides, have wisely separated these two subjects into distinct books, and in doing so they have produced a superior product with better organization and more useful information.
BTW, it's interesting to note that the only other review of this book (at this time) was submitted 4 months before it was published. And while it's a positive review, it still only gives the book 4 stars...
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