Sunken Gardens

Beautiful ideas, impressive illustrations, to the point information, great value for money

If you are looking to create or maintain a high tech (CO2 injected, high light, fertilized) tank, this book will help. If you're looking to create a low tech tank or dirted tank, move on. It's fine to exlude these options, but it would've been great if it had been clear from the description that that was the case. Reading this one gets the impression that low tech tanks aren't worth the time or effort.

If you are interested in having an aquarium filled with beautiful plants, fish, etc. you can learn all that you need to know from this one book. There are several pretty good books available on this topic, but none more up to date, nor more comprehensive. The planted aquarium hobby is new enough that there is still a lot of basic information that changes every few years, so you are more likely to get accurate information from newer books than from older ones.This book shows you what many of the aquatic plants you see in aquariums look like in their natural water settings, where they grow naturally, and how they look in an aquarium. It also describes the categories of tropical fish that are most likely to do well in those aquariums, and some that are unlikely to do well. It explains how to set up the aquarium so it has the necessary light, "sand", fertilizers, and water quality for good plant growth. There are enough big, beautiful photos of well designed "aquascapes" to help you design your own, to look like you want it to.This is a virtual encyclopedia on the subject of planted aquariums, sure to be helpful for any hobbyist from the beginner to the casual hobbyist, to the experienced hobbyist. I'm sure I will be reading this many times.

I bought this before starting my first planted aquarium in hopes to better understand acquascaping. As an RN and having already had a solid understanding of chemistry and biology, I thought found the terminology and depth very helpful and would have welcomed more. I find myself going back to reference certain parts of the book (such as the carbonate and general hardness chapter) as my tank needs change.I think it's important for people to understand that they should be reading TO understand, not to be told what to do. Every tank is different, water is different.. everything is different! So although some parameters can be more rigid there is often room to wiggle in others. If you learn how and why something works you are then empowered to step forward independently and use books like this to help guide your decisions, which is what they should be for and this book does for me. I especially like her suggestion to learn to work with the water you have as opposed to making it be something it is not which does make things much, much easier!

It's a book for absolute beginners. Nothing is presented that will benefit you if you already now the basics sans some plant names which deserves it's own text. The information on plants and names is nice, but over done and couldn't been it's own booklet on plants. Also there are way too many oversized pictures. This is common in books trying to pad the pages, it's akin to double spacing text or using a large type font. I expected more actual information. In fact I chose this over a more technical book due on the page count, I just assumed there'd be more info not just massive pictures of plants. Lesson learned and this is already in the bin.

I LOVE this book; it's the most up-to-date plant book out there, even acknowledging and mentioning entities like 'websites' and 'YouTube' by name! Gives great down-to-Earth guidelines with plenty of tips that she herself uses. Also breaks down a lot of the mystique associated with complicated topics like lighting and CO2 fertilization. The one thing that I thought she could have been just a tiny bit more clear on was substrate differentiations and their pros and cons; other books do this very well, though, so they can be used as a supplement. All-in-all, I REALLY liked this book; it was very personable and approachable.