<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Don't hesitate, buy it.
Review: Books on aquarium plants are hard to find as I know having searched long and hard to find a decent one. Well look no longer. This is it. Lovely photos, full sized A4 and full colour. The text is in English, Chinese, Japanese and Spanish. Haven't read all the text yet, which is at the beginning of the book, but have sat drooling over the photos. With this book to hand you will be able to recognise every single plant in your aquarium. Each plant is accompanied by a symbol guide to how much light, placement, temperature, true or false aquatic, ph plus reproduction information. Don't hesitate, buy it.
Rating: 
Summary: good referance
Review: dont expect alot in terms of care guides, as they are brief and already, somwhat dated (eg, tepot indicates that metal halides are the only way to light planted tanks: simply not true). but it has an exalent encyclopdia of both true aquatic and terrestrial plants often sold as aquatic. again, its a good referance.
Rating:
Summary: good referance
Review: dont expect alot in terms of care guides, as they are brief and already, somwhat dated (eg, tepot indicates that metal halides are the only way to light planted tanks: simply not true). but it has an exalent encyclopdia of both true aquatic and terrestrial plants often sold as aquatic. again, its a good referance.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't buy this book
Review: If you are a beginner, and are looking for a very simple, quick, basic plant identification guide, this MAY be the book for you. However, for the price, I personally would want a bit more for my money. The information in the book is oversimplified to a fault and some of it is inaccurate. While the photography is very good, the masking done to the photos is very poor - you can actually see where they were clipped out of the background in many of the photos - an unexcusable oversight for a publication whose only real strength IS the photography. If the quality of the photoediting was sufficient, I would be willing to recommend the book - even at the expense of poor content - for those looking for a pretty "coffee-table" type book (which unfortunately is what so many publications in this hobby ultimately end up amounting to). However, due to the poor masking, I don't feel it even measures up to those superficial standards. This book was meant to be an ID guide, and it IS good for helping the beginner aquatic plant enthusiast identify the more common types of aquatic plants. I just do not think that you are getting a good deal for your money.
Rating: 
Summary: Book for Plants Lover
Review: Like Mercedes,if you expect to get high quality plants picture ,this book really accomodate with all plants details that you will need to place your lovely plant in tank. But to achieve succesfull aqua scaping you need to be carefull as this book lack of information 'what you should do & know to set up whole tank'.Remember that plant is only part of whole succes tank set up. Another book from Barry James & Dianna Walstadt will be essential to enrich what you need to understand.At last offcourse for such Mercedes you have to pay more expensive.
Rating:
Summary: a lot of picture but lack of informaion
Review: This book is a lot of pictures but lack of infomation and it's translated in 3 languages that confuse. It's propery for beginer.
Rating:
Summary: Good for plant identification only
Review: This book was written in the style of the Axelrod atlases, with pictures and icons. If you like those atlases, you will probably love this book. But if you prefer the Baensch atlases, with more detailed text descriptions of various parameters, then you might not. The pictures are very sharp. The plants were photographed up-close against a black background, making identification very easy. In most cases each plant was photographed by itself or the picture was digitally altered to remove the background (note the sharp outline of some of the flowers, as if it was cut with a pair of scissors--not something you would get from a real image). While this enhances the ease of identification, the drawback from this approach is that it is hard to envision what the plant would look like in a real aquarium, among other plants. I found the information on each plant, provided by the icons, very lacking. There is also a short discussion (provided in three languages) on various topics relating to aquarium plant keeping at the beginning of the book. However, I found some of this information (like the discussion on pH, KH and buffering) to be incorrect, probably due to oversimplification. Overall, it is a fairly good book and an excellent source for plant identification. But that's about all it should be used for.
Rating:
Summary: Good for plant identification only
Review: This book was written in the style of the Axelrod atlases, with pictures and icons. If you like those atlases, you will probably love this book. But if you prefer the Baensch atlases, with more detailed text descriptions of various parameters, then you might not. The pictures are very sharp. The plants were photographed up-close against a black background, making identification very easy. In most cases each plant was photographed by itself or the picture was digitally altered to remove the background (note the sharp outline of some of the flowers, as if it was cut with a pair of scissors--not something you would get from a real image). While this enhances the ease of identification, the drawback from this approach is that it is hard to envision what the plant would look like in a real aquarium, among other plants. I found the information on each plant, provided by the icons, very lacking. There is also a short discussion (provided in three languages) on various topics relating to aquarium plant keeping at the beginning of the book. However, I found some of this information (like the discussion on pH, KH and buffering) to be incorrect, probably due to oversimplification. Overall, it is a fairly good book and an excellent source for plant identification. But that's about all it should be used for.
<< 1 >>
| 
