Customer Reviews

Pocket Professional Guide to Cichlids

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

 

 

Good reference book on looking up cichlids. Even my teen-agers who are getting into our new tank are spending some time reading through this book.

It has useful information on most species such as maximum size, water conditions, food needs, temperament & compatibility. With some species with color variations or closely related species, it uses common descriptions applicable to all of them, and shows photos of the variations.

But it is missing a common-name index which it sorely needs. Hence, only 4 stars.

Hooray for the book NOT having common names! What I commonly call an "X", someone two states over may call a "G". As with plants, etc. common names only muddy the information. It is not difficult to learn the correct name for a given fish! If I mail-order or otherwise buy a fish I need to be sure it is what I want.

This book is one of the better of the more recent books available. It is not as complete as some other books, but for its size it is pretty good. It uses the more recent taxonomic naming so this might confuse some readers, but is refreshing over some of the older TFH books of cichlids. Unlike some reviews complaining about the lack of common names, this is a definite plus for this book. The biggest negative is that some of the Central American cichlids are not assigned to the correct genus (ie Partheraps synspilus, should be in genus Vieja, Archocentrus octofasciatus should be in the genus Roxia)

Bought this book to assist setting up a large cichlid tank. I was looking for information on cichlids that are a little less common than those found at my local fish store. Was not disappointed.

I bought this book to help me in setting up a cichlid tank (primarily to select the fish). The book has lots of good information, however the single major drawback is it has almost no common names. The common names that it does have are not indexed and indeed the book is not setup to use common names to locate an article. If you are a taxonomist or scientist no common names are fine, but the average, casual fish keeper could really benefit from the common names being included.In my years of keeping tropical freshwater fish (20), I have encountered fish keepers who pride themselves on being able to rattle off the scientific names of their fish, thats great and all, but I don't find the names as pleasant nor as useful in everyday conversation.

This is a great book for people who are starting out and also for those of you that already know about these amazing fish. I learned so much that I decided to buy 6 fish--so far all is great.

I would say this book is very useful!

The Pocket Professional Guide to Cichlids is an excellent book for the care and identification of the gambit of cichlids from around the world. My only disapointment was the lack of some of the very rare cichlids in the hobby. However The Guide does cover most of the cichlids commonly and uncommonly kept in the hobby. A very good buy.

I have many other books on cichlids published by tfh and I discovered that this book contained many pictures reproduced from earlier and old tfh publications. I was hoping to see some pretty interesting new pictures and information.

The information on individual fishes are rather basic stuff, most of it I was able to obtain from other literatures. I really do not think much effort was taken to produce this book. Being a diehard cichlidophile, this book merely adds up to my large collection of cichlid books.

This is an awesome Book !! I have Fish stores asking where I got it !!! I would never part with it !! I recommend it highly !

I like the book but honestly it should be more on common names and not the latin ones. I guess its mean those whostudy NOT buy cichlids.