The Inspired Aquarium: Ideas and Instruction for Living with Aquariums
In light of the recent popularity of such movies as Finding Nemo and Shark Tale, and aquariums as elements of interior decor, home aquariums have become all the rage. Since there are so many ways you can design an aquarium today, a little guidance is definitely needed. The Inspired Aquarium is a key tool to use while searching for ideas to help inspire your own home-aquarium design. This complete handbook acts as both an inspirational and factual guide. It shows you the most compatible choices i
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(out of 14 reviews)
List Price: $ 25.00
Price: $ 8.63
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Review by S. Colley for The Inspired Aquarium: Ideas and Instruction for Living with Aquariums
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The Inspired Aquarium by Jeff and Mike Senske is outstanding IMO. It has a vertical focus – aesthetics blended with practical advice in creating a visually appealing aquarium, broadly applied to every major type of tank. This book is not an “in the frame” aquarium picture book like Amano’s, where you get a view of a tank with equipment ripped out, fans across the top to create ripples, and everything but the interior of the tank blacked out. Instead this book is filled with photos showing how lovely an aquarium can be, not just within the confines of the tank, but beautifully incorporated into your home. And it provides lots of practical information on how to make your vision a reality.
It covers fresh and saltwater fish only tanks, along with planted FW and SW reef tanks. It is not a detail technical treatise on any of those types of tank. So a beginner would have to supplement their information to get started in any of these areas, though they would have more than enough information to decide what type of aquarium they want to tackle. While it is not strictly a “how-to” book, it is filled with useful advice that seems to be lacking in so many books other dealing with aquarium aesthetics. It is particularly useful for guidance in the areas of aquarium (and equipment!) placement, plumbing, selection of aquarium and fish, filtration and lighting.
If you want an aquarium, and have set yourself a $175 budget, this is not the book you need. But if you are someone that is interested in getting into the hobby, and are willing to invest a little money and time in creating a piece of living art in your home, then this is the book you’ve been waiting for! Or if you are trying to figure out what type of tank you want – freshwater with fish? Freshwater planted? Salt? Reef? This provides great detail around the differences and relative difficulty of owning those types of tanks. And for people like myself, already in the hobby, but can’t quite afford some of the truly magnificent tanks showcased in this book, it is still extraordinarily helpful for both the practical advice and truly inspirational examples and case studies it provides.
Books like Takashi Amano’s Nature Aquarium World only show you beautiful interior pictures of planted tanks, and Cristell Kasselmann’s Aquarium Plants only provide scientific information on FW aquarium plants. That is more than enough to justify the purchase of either IMO. But the Senske’s The Inspired Aquarium provides both tons of practical advice and inspiring examples of creating aquariums as living works of art in your home. For me, that was enough reason to run, not walk, to go get the book.
And once in my hand, I could not make myself put it down until I had read it cover-to-cover. Actually the first night I had it, I fell asleep with it in my hands…
As far as I can tell, this type of book is unique within the hobby, and long overdue.
Review by Wynne for The Inspired Aquarium: Ideas and Instruction for Living with Aquariums
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If you think you want an aquarium, this is a great introduction to how to do it right, as well as an inspiration with great photos and ideas. As an aquarist with some years of experience, I didn’t expect to learn much new here, and didn’t, but still picked up some useful information. I bought the book because I’m redesigning my reef aquarium and couldn’t seem to decide on what I wanted to do with cabinetry and sizing.
One thing the book makes very clear, and which is helpful for beginners or those who have done some reading but are having trouble sorting it all out, is that there are various categories of tanks. What works for a planted freshwater aquarium is not the best approach for an unplanted one. What works for a fish-only marine is not the same as for a reef. The book breaks it all down by type of aquarium, makes clear which ones are the most work, and explains the equipment basics. There is an excellent resources section at the end for learning more.
Review by P. Jorstad for The Inspired Aquarium: Ideas and Instruction for Living with Aquariums
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This is not a book for beginners who want to know how to set up a tank. Rather, this is a book for creating a tank that will fit in a magazine such a Home Beautiful. Amano’s books give examples of stunning layouts. This book will give ideas of how to plan a stunning layout that blends with the color of the room’s woodwork, drapery and lighting. And, it thoughtfully discusses planning where to put the filtration, drains and water source for ease of maintaining the tank. (Gotta keep that carpet clean – these rooms are show pieces, remember.)
Examples are given of neutral color fish that provide background for more colorful fish to avoid a tank that is too ‘busy’. Coordination of substrate color is discussed. Reference is made several times to ‘the tank maintenance service’. This is, basically, a book on interior decorating that specializes in tanks.
All in all, this is a book that rounds out a library and I have to recommend it to a library that has already covered the basics. However, you will probably not being applying the knowledge unless you either are dreaming or have bucks.
Review by S. Canzonieri for The Inspired Aquarium: Ideas and Instruction for Living with Aquariums
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A great book to open your range of choices on the design of not only your home aquarium but the environment it will be placed in.
Lots of great ideas for cabinet designs.
Best of all, each aquarium shown follows the principles of biotope or natural aquarium design themes, so they are beautiful as well as close to authentic.
A welcome addition to all the other aquarium design books, and a lot more fancy too.
Review by addjewelry for The Inspired Aquarium: Ideas and Instruction for Living with Aquariums
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When I first started to read this book, I thought that it was only for the wealthy, since it deals largely with huge custom-made tanks in built-in cabinetry, or how to work an aquarium into your blueprints. It even refers to a 72-gallon aquarium as “small”. But the principles of design and maintenance can apply to the more modest sizes of aquaria too.
If you are new to the hobby, it’ll help you decide between freshwater and marine, and then whether you want live plants or live coral. It’ll help you choose an aesthetically pleasing location for your aquarium and help you aquascape the interior.
I found the plant section to be especially helpful, even though it was a brief overview. In its description of the major plant groups, it mentioned which ones can get by with less light, or without a CO2 system, or with little pruning. And it didn’t put me to sleep like the plant sections of other aquarium books.
The last section, entitled “Case Studies”, is really cool. There they take some of the tanks pictured in previous sections and give you all the stats on aquarium size, exactly what filtration was used, lighting, livestock, etc. They also give tips on coordinating the aquarium with the surrounding interior design.
The only negative things I can say about the book are about some misplaced and repeated captions. Also, I would have liked to have seen some aerial-view sketches of aquascaping floor plans, showing plant and rock placement.
P.S. If you are not going to hire an aquarium installation and maintenance service, then you need to complete your fish education with one of the Complete Idiot’s Guides by Mike Wickham.