Books About Fish

 

I love fish books. Especially books about freshwater tropical fish.

This page lists some of the books that I have, and what I like about them. Most of my books are pretty old, and thus out of date (Does this mean that I am old and out of date???) but in fairness, I bought most of them used and they were pretty old when I got them. I hope you like seeing my collection of tropical fish books.

I recognize that as much as I love these books, there are a lot of new books out that I don't have (but would like to!) that have better information and are much more up to date. If you are interested in some good, up to date books I have some listed at the bottom of this page. I am an associate with Amazon.com, so if you like any of these books and click through to amazon and buy them I get a small comission. (at no extra cost to you!) So - if you are interested in buying any of these books through amazon, please click through this page to buy them. It will help support this website and hopefully I can make it bigger and better. Thanks.

Here are my books:

Exotic Aquarium Fishes "The Innes Book" by Dr. William T. Innes. Published by Metaframe.

What can I say? This is the first fish book I ever bought. As a matter of fact, I think it was the first book I ever bought. Mine is the 19th edition revised. 592 pages, over 500 illustrations, and 100 color plates. Mine has a great yellow hard cover with a picturue of some rasboras, a discus, and a male Betta. Interestingly, the book is titled Exotic Aquarium Fishes because Innes asserts that many of the interesting fish we keep in our tanks are not truly tropical fish. I bought my copy when I was very young at a local petstore for $2.99. My parents were shocked that I wanted to spend my allowance that I had saved on a book.

I can honestly say that I have many sections of this book completely memorized. I learned an awful lot about fishkeeping from this book. Besides the usual sections on basic aquarium maintenance, plants, the extensive collection of fish, etc. this book has some interesting "extras". There is a section on wholesale breeding, and a section on collecting and transporting fish. There is a section on fish shows, and one of my favorites.....a section on building aqaurium tanks. (The old fashioned metal framed kinds)

 

All About Tropical Fish by Derek McInerny and Geoffrey Gerard. Published by The Macmillan Company. 480 pages.

This is the first fish book I ever read. They had a version of it at the downtown library in Peoria, IL. I used to go down there and check it out all the time. Reading this book was what motivated me to buy the Innes book (listed above). This book had a jacket and the price marked in the jacket was $15.00. Thus, when I wanted it from the library I asked my dad to pick up "the $15.00 fish book". $15.00 was an exorbitant amount of money (totally out of reach of a kid my age then) so it made the Innes book very attractive to me when I saw it for only $2.99 at the pet shop.

Later, the copy at the Peoria library disappeared. I don't know if it got lost, or someone stole it, or what happened. So, my Uncle decided to buy me a copy of the McInerny book for Christmas, but was unable to locate one. So - he and my mom wrote to the publisher who informed them it was no longer available. I didn't see any copies of that book for a long long time.

Several years ago, I was browsing at a used bookstore called "Acres of Books" in Champaign, Illinois (near the University of Illinois) and I stumbled across it. It was priced at $7.00, so I didn't even think twice and I bought it. It was great to see those familiar pictures and read it again. This version is a bit different than the one I used to get at the library (I think it might be newer) but it is clearly the same basic book. This is the book that I learned (when I was very young) about scientific names, some of the symbols used in fish descriptions, and about the British spelling of color. "colour"

This book has all the usual sections: Plants, food, basic maintenance, breeding, fish enemies, diseases, etc. followed by a great catalog of various fish.

 

Handbook of Tropical Aquarium Fishes by Dr. Herbert R. Axelrod and Dr. Leonard P. Schultz. Published by T.F.H. Publications.

This is a whopper. 718 pages. I bought it for $8.95 at the Scott County Seed in Northern Illinois. A friend of mine took me there. They had a lot more fish and fish stuff than I might have expected.

This book is mostly a catalog of fishes with descriptions and photos. This is what I think of as a typical Axelrod book. It has a great cover with a color photo of a freshwater angelfish.

 

The Encyclopedia of Freshwater Tropical Fishes - Expanded Edition by Dr. Herbert R. Axelrod, Dr. Cliff W. Emmens, Dr. Warren E. Burgess, Neal Pronek, and Glen S. Axelrod. Published by T. F. H. Publications Inc.

This is even more of a whopper. 1,312 pages. Lots of color.

My college roomate gave me this book as a gift. (great gift!)The price marked on it was $19.98, but there was also a sticker on it saying 50% off. Not sure if the $19 was before or after the discount. I think it was probably $10.00. Another very "Axelrod" book.

 

I also have a number of small, thin, paperback books. (all of the above are hardcover) that I will list here when I get a chance.

 

Books for Sale

 

The following is not meant to be a sales pitch. Rather, I am pointing out some new books that may be interesting to own. As I mentioned above, if you buy these books from amazon.com by clicking on the links below it will help support this site. I hope you find something you like! I haven't read all these books, so be sure to check out the sample pages, read the reviews, etc.

Dr. Axelrod's Mini-Atlas of Freshwater...

Complete Introduction to Breeding...

The Cichlid Aquarium

Aquarium Atlas (Vol. 1, 6th Edition)

Aquarium Fishes of the World