Customer Reviews

The Inspired Aquarium: Ideas and Instruction for Living with Aquariums

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Inspired Aquarium by Jeff and Mike Senske is outstanding IMO. It has a vertical focus - aesthetics blended with practical advice in creating a visually appealing aquarium, broadly applied to every major type of tank. This book is not an "in the frame" aquarium picture book like Amano's, where you get a view of a tank with equipment ripped out, fans across the top to create ripples, and everything but the interior of the tank blacked out. Instead this book is filled with photos showing how lovely an aquarium can be, not just within the confines of the tank, but beautifully incorporated into your home. And it provides lots of practical information on how to make your vision a reality.

It covers fresh and saltwater fish only tanks, along with planted FW and SW reef tanks. It is not a detail technical treatise on any of those types of tank. So a beginner would have to supplement their information to get started in any of these areas, though they would have more than enough information to decide what type of aquarium they want to tackle. While it is not strictly a "how-to" book, it is filled with useful advice that seems to be lacking in so many books other dealing with aquarium aesthetics. It is particularly useful for guidance in the areas of aquarium (and equipment!) placement, plumbing, selection of aquarium and fish, filtration and lighting.

If you want an aquarium, and have set yourself a $175 budget, this is not the book you need. But if you are someone that is interested in getting into the hobby, and are willing to invest a little money and time in creating a piece of living art in your home, then this is the book you've been waiting for! Or if you are trying to figure out what type of tank you want - freshwater with fish? Freshwater planted? Salt? Reef? This provides great detail around the differences and relative difficulty of owning those types of tanks. And for people like myself, already in the hobby, but can't quite afford some of the truly magnificent tanks showcased in this book, it is still extraordinarily helpful for both the practical advice and truly inspirational examples and case studies it provides.

Books like Takashi Amano's Nature Aquarium World only show you beautiful interior pictures of planted tanks, and Cristell Kasselmann's Aquarium Plants only provide scientific information on FW aquarium plants. That is more than enough to justify the purchase of either IMO. But the Senske's The Inspired Aquarium provides both tons of practical advice and inspiring examples of creating aquariums as living works of art in your home. For me, that was enough reason to run, not walk, to go get the book.

And once in my hand, I could not make myself put it down until I had read it cover-to-cover. Actually the first night I had it, I fell asleep with it in my hands...

As far as I can tell, this type of book is unique within the hobby, and long overdue.

If you think you want an aquarium, this is a great introduction to how to do it right, as well as an inspiration with great photos and ideas. As an aquarist with some years of experience, I didn't expect to learn much new here, and didn't, but still picked up some useful information. I bought the book because I'm redesigning my reef aquarium and couldn't seem to decide on what I wanted to do with cabinetry and sizing.

One thing the book makes very clear, and which is helpful for beginners or those who have done some reading but are having trouble sorting it all out, is that there are various categories of tanks. What works for a planted freshwater aquarium is not the best approach for an unplanted one. What works for a fish-only marine is not the same as for a reef. The book breaks it all down by type of aquarium, makes clear which ones are the most work, and explains the equipment basics. There is an excellent resources section at the end for learning more.

This is not a book for beginners who want to know how to set up a tank. Rather, this is a book for creating a tank that will fit in a magazine such a Home Beautiful. Amano's books give examples of stunning layouts. This book will give ideas of how to plan a stunning layout that blends with the color of the room's woodwork, drapery and lighting. And, it thoughtfully discusses planning where to put the filtration, drains and water source for ease of maintaining the tank. (Gotta keep that carpet clean - these rooms are show pieces, remember.)

Examples are given of neutral color fish that provide background for more colorful fish to avoid a tank that is too 'busy'. Coordination of substrate color is discussed. Reference is made several times to 'the tank maintenance service'. This is, basically, a book on interior decorating that specializes in tanks.

All in all, this is a book that rounds out a library and I have to recommend it to a library that has already covered the basics. However, you will probably not being applying the knowledge unless you either are dreaming or have bucks.

When I first started to read this book, I thought that it was only for the wealthy, since it deals largely with huge custom-made tanks in built-in cabinetry, or how to work an aquarium into your blueprints. It even refers to a 72-gallon aquarium as "small". But the principles of design and maintenance can apply to the more modest sizes of aquaria too.

If you are new to the hobby, it'll help you decide between freshwater and marine, and then whether you want live plants or live coral. It'll help you choose an aesthetically pleasing location for your aquarium and help you aquascape the interior.

I found the plant section to be especially helpful, even though it was a brief overview. In its description of the major plant groups, it mentioned which ones can get by with less light, or without a CO2 system, or with little pruning. And it didn't put me to sleep like the plant sections of other aquarium books.

The last section, entitled "Case Studies", is really cool. There they take some of the tanks pictured in previous sections and give you all the stats on aquarium size, exactly what filtration was used, lighting, livestock, etc. They also give tips on coordinating the aquarium with the surrounding interior design.

The only negative things I can say about the book are about some misplaced and repeated captions. Also, I would have liked to have seen some aerial-view sketches of aquascaping floor plans, showing plant and rock placement.

P.S. If you are not going to hire an aquarium installation and maintenance service, then you need to complete your fish education with one of the Complete Idiot's Guides by Mike Wickham.

A great book to open your range of choices on the design of not only your home aquarium but the environment it will be placed in.

Lots of great ideas for cabinet designs.

Best of all, each aquarium shown follows the principles of biotope or natural aquarium design themes, so they are beautiful as well as close to authentic.

A welcome addition to all the other aquarium design books, and a lot more fancy too.

I thought this was more of a book about building aquariums.
It is a book with very nice photos, of very fancy aquariums in expensive places.
Not much help for the average homeowner.

I really liked this book and found it very informative.

The author gives great recommendations and advise. For example, you want to place your aquarium in an area with the least sound. Placing your aquarium near a door is not a good idea. The constant opening and closing of the door generates sound waves that disturb fish and reduce their immune system.

The height of the aquarium will also depend on whether you want to enjoy looking at the aquarium while seated (e.g. in a living room), or while standing (e.g. in a corridor). Special furniture placed under the aquarium will help in raising or lowering your aquarium's height. The above considerations are important, for once your aquarium is filled with water, it will be hard to move. Removing the fish and emptying the water from the aquarium in order to move it is stressful for the fish. Stress causes a lowering of the immune system and thus diseases.

The author discusses aquarium size (the bigger the better); glass versus acrylic designs; mechanical, chemical, and biological filtration; and lighting (fish need rest, and 24 hours lighting will affect the immune system of the fish). He also compares freshwater aquariums with salt water ones, and discusses live planted and coral reef aquariums.

I never really considered a live-planted aquarium, that is until reading this book. The author explains which fish can live in a planted aquarium, and which can't. Plants change the ph (alkalinity) and the carbon dioxide level of the water, and not all fish can live in such an environment. He also recommends the best plants for a beginner aquarist. I went through his list and quickly ordered those plants from the internet.

Not all fish can live together. Bigger fish can eat smaller ones, specially fish fry. It is therefore important to carefully choose the inhabitants of your aquarium.

The pictures in the book are beautiful and inspiring. Many readers will probably imitate many of the aquarium designs in this book.

The book is very well illustrated with great explanatory pictures and diagrams. I highly recommend this book for aquarium enthusiasts.

If you are looking for inpsiration in different designs or pretty pictures, then this is the book for you. If you are looking for good information about how to set up and maintain a saltwater aquarium, then there are far better books out there. The book is printed on high quality paper and has plenty of top-notch photos, but the information it contains about saltwater aquariums is very suspect.

The methodology for running a saltwater aquarium that is espoused by the book can be summarized as set up a trickle filter or sump with a filter sponge and do huge water changes very frequently. While this may very well work, there are certainly more advanced, simpler, less time-consuming, and less expensive ways to maintain an aquarium.

The information that is missing from the book is more troublesome than what is included. For example, the filtration options that are covered in the book only include trickle filters (wet-dry filters) and canister filters. There is no mention of other filtration methods such as live rock/live sand, hang on filters, fluidized bed, refugiums, etc. The book doesn't even mention activated carbon.

If your only options for filtration are the ones they discuss, then the proposition that excess lighting causes excess algae is expected, and the authors certainly suggest that. Although it is now commonly acknowledged in the hobby that excess nutrients causes excess algae and not lighting, the book suggests that proximity to windows and direct sunlight causes excess algae growth and states "The maximum amount of time per day that a reef or live-planted aquarium can be under full illumination is ten hours"..."going even one or two hours beyond the prescribed ten-hour period can lead to problems, namely with algae"... There is certainly some benefit to maintaining limits on lighting in an aquarium, but the information the book provides in this area is simply incorrect.

I do not give the book low marks because of the lack of detail since it is pretty clear that the intent is simply to provide an overview of things. However, given that, some of the detail that is presented doesn't make sense. For instance, they provide very little info about fish, corals, and invertebrates, but they present info on several species of clownfish, wrasses, and tangs rather than simply cover categories of inhabitants.

There are also major areas that I expected to be covered or covered better, such as maintenance. There is one mention that supplements might be needed, but no included detail, and no mention of testing or water parameters.

Overall it is a very nice looking book with fantastic pictures and it certainly stimulates the imagination about what you can accomplish on the high end with an aquarium, but the information provided could be far better. The purpose of the book seems to be related to how to keep an aquarium in your home without it clashing with the decor rather than what's involved in setting up and maintaining an aquarium.

"Inspired Aquariums" was a joy to read and look at, the photographs of each aquarium was amazing. I found many ideas for aquariums to use for my own aquarium. Instructions were good but was more for the advanced aquarist, which I'm not. All in all it was a good reference book for my
library.

This book is an awesome general overview for those that are researching a big budget build.
It is not a reference guide for someone researching specific reef, planted,community fish aquaria info.
There are many other books that serve that purpose.
You will see many aspects of aquaria installed in some very unique situations by a great team who do this everyday from their facility in Houston.