Brackish-Water Fishes: An Aquarist's Guide to Identification, Care & Husbandry Hardcover – December 1, 2006

This is a beautiful book, and the author tries to be comprehensive for the most part, but there are too many gorgeous pictures and detailed articles about fish that really aren't suitable for brackish aquariums. Far too many of the fish in the book don't live naturally in brackish conditions, and I found the full-page photo of the discus beautiful but badly out of place in this book, even with the caption that it's not suitable for brackish conditions. So why include it at all in this book? I'd been hoping for more information on the many, many North American brackish killis and pupfishes, but other than a brief mention of Florida flagfish, an even briefer mention of sheepshead killis, and a throwaway sentence about all of the others, that was it. There are the lengthy treatments of monos, scats, archerfishes and mudskippers that one would expect, but the articles about most of the cichlids--other than the chromides--and the rainbowfishes and so on made it seem as if the author was trying desperately to fill out the book but equally determined to ignore many genuinely brackish water fish. Why leave out the blue fin killis, rainwaters and so on? They may not be readily obtainable in stores, but you can find them on-line without much trouble, they're easy to maintain in their customary brackish conditions, active and interesting, and they'll spawn happily. Much easier for the average person to keep than say, trying to maintain most of those freshwater fish in a brackish tank. To be honest, as I read the articles about keeping cichlids, rainbowfish and tetras in even minimal brackish conditions, I kept asking myself, why bother? Why not just keep them in freshwater where they belong? While this book does have a great deal of useful information, the major inclusion of non-brackish water fish seemed a strange and potentially misleading choice, and the omission of several easy-to-keep, genuinely brackish water fish was disappointing.

This book has a lot of great information on brackish water aquariums. Keep in mind that it is important to read the general information as well as the section about the particular fish you are looking to keep. I bought it to learn how to keep green spotted puffers and it's been the best and most informative book I could find. I now feel confident that I understand how to care for the fish I am interested in keeping. It even tells you how fast it is safe to increase specific gravity for species like the green spotted puffer that begin in freshwater and must be raised to near full marine or full maine conditions. That was a piece of information I had a hard time finding anywhere else.

Good book. Color photos are good and I liked that it had a lot of fish that you normally don't get to read about in many other aquarium fish books. I would recommend the book if you like or have brackish aquariums. It covers a wide range of families.

A splendid book, well written and illustrated and to the point. There are very few books that deal with brackish water fishes. In northern Australia there are dozens and dozens of species that are in this category and they are interesting and easy to keep. This book will help users maintain them successfully.Dave Rentz

My son loved this book. He loves to learn many things about different topics. Anything about the different types of water is exciting to him.

Well written and organized book, great graphics, and loads of information.Very thorough in listing all the types of brackish fish and their requirements. Worth getting if you are setting up such a tank. Makes the task less challenging.

This is the ultimate book for the brackish water enthusiast.Covers just about everything. Will satisfy most readers.Previous reviewers commented that it could have included more on habitat and plants found there. This is unfortunate as the original manuscript did cover more on habitat and plants. In fact there was a whole chapter on mangroves, where to find them and how to keep them. The publisher felt that the book was getting too big and this was edited out.

This is a very good book. Very informative good pictures may need a few more on the less seen species. Overall Great book

Great book for brackish fish keepers. Well worth having in the library of fish keeping books.

Fantastic book, highly recommended

About the only guide there is to brackish water fishes. Excellent book for guide to set up and caring for this type of aquarium.Quick delivery and although second hand was in very good condition A+++