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Pet Library Aquarium Guide
Comprehensive guide to aquariums and freshwater fish keeping, with 220 colour plates.
282 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1969
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About the author
Jim Kelly
51 books2 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 3, 2025
There's a certain appeal to vintage fish keeping guides, seeing how everything was managed back in the day (in other words —when I started in the hobby, decades ago). Certainly there were no "test kits" and people had little idea what their exact "water parameters" actually were. Now the industry is heavily commercialized, there are products for everything, and very expensive chemicals are considered "essential".
Different types of fish too fall in and out of fashion.
This is a comprehensive guide, circa 1969 (the old days!), which covers anatomy, plants, snails, aquarium set-up and maintenance, types of fish, and so on. There is even a chapter on professional hatcheries, and how they are set up.
There was a time when books such as this one, and popular magazines catering to the trade (plus your local aquarium club if you were so lucky) were the only sources of knowledge for the hobbyist. Now there is the internet but I must say — just like with every other topic — one must sift through a vast amount of misleading garbage to get to the truly useful parts, and that assumes you already know enough to have the capacity to distinguish between pure garbage and useful information.
Different types of fish too fall in and out of fashion.
This is a comprehensive guide, circa 1969 (the old days!), which covers anatomy, plants, snails, aquarium set-up and maintenance, types of fish, and so on. There is even a chapter on professional hatcheries, and how they are set up.
There was a time when books such as this one, and popular magazines catering to the trade (plus your local aquarium club if you were so lucky) were the only sources of knowledge for the hobbyist. Now there is the internet but I must say — just like with every other topic — one must sift through a vast amount of misleading garbage to get to the truly useful parts, and that assumes you already know enough to have the capacity to distinguish between pure garbage and useful information.
Displaying 1 of 1 review