Fancy Goldfish: A Complete Guide to Care and Collecting Book Review

Looking for a solid, down to earth, well written, easily understood book about Goldfish care?

This book is expensive.  You don't need it if you have an aquarium with a few Goldfish in it.  There are other books that are more suitable that I have reviewed.

If you are a serious Goldfish keeper, you need this book.

Why?

Two features make this a stand out reference book about Goldfish, both valid reasons to own this publication.

1. The over 100 superb color photographs of beautiful and rare varieties by Fred Rosenzweig and more importantly…
2. The heavy emphasis on the diagnosis and treatment of Goldfish diseases.

With one of the writers being a leading fish veterinarian in the United States this should not be a surprise.  Many Goldfish care books give detailed instructions on how to care for your Goldfish to avoid them getting sick, but very few tell you how to cure them when they do.

This book is my go-to whenever I am wanting to confirm a diagnosis, and is the most read in my Goldfish book collection.

Book Details:

What Are the Benefits from Owning the Book?

You have instant access to:

• An extensive list of parasitical, bacterial, fungal and viral threats to Goldfish health
• An extensive list of symptoms, causes, and solutions to most Goldfish diseases
• A formulary that lists bath, topical, oral and injected methods for the correct use of medications
• Environmental and other treats to Goldfish health.

And this is only the first part of the book!

Part two is dedicated to the care of Goldfish and chapters discussing the Chinese and Japanese influences on Goldfish development, plus there is a chapter on breeding Ranchus by a leading US breeder who has spent 20 years developing his impressive strain.

What Makes This Book Special?

This book has been written by experts in their fields.  This isn’t a compilation of information gleaned from websites or by using A.I. (artificial intelligence) by someone wanting to make a quick dollar on Amazon…and there are quite a few!

This book is the only one I know of that dedicates nearly half of the contents to the identification and treatment of Goldfish diseases.

What's the Best Features of This Book?

The comprehensive information about the diagnosis and treatment of Goldfish diseases is why I purchased the book.  The other chapters are nice to have, and have certainly added to my knowledge about Goldfish, but it is the disease treatment sections that have been the most valuable.

Having said that, the book also covers the basics of Goldfish care such as what's the best size tank for Goldfish and the importance of maintaining water quality.

And did I mention the superb color photographs...

What I Don't Like About the Book

To give a balanced opinion of the book, I have to include a couple of dislikes.

• The book doesn’t have an index.  For a book of this caliber, I would expect one.
• The table of contents doesn’t have page numbers against every sub-heading, only major headings.
• In the second part of the book dedicated to the Keeping of fancy Goldfish, several different experts have provided content about hand spawning, Chinese Goldfish, Japanese Goldfish and breeding Ranchus, so there are different writing styles.  This gives a slightly disjointed feel to the book.
  

The bonus I suppose is the Authors felt these experts had more knowledge in their fields than they did.

What Other Reviewers Say

This book is rated at 4.8 out of 5 stars on Amazon.

The main complaint from the 3% that gave a 3 star or less review was the amount of detail concerning diseases and their treatments.  They appear to be novices.

I agree that not every reader wants to perform surgery on their fish, but you can’t knock a publication because you feel it has too much detailed information.  The majority of the information is easily digested by the novice.

My rating of this publication is 5 stars – a must have for serious Goldfish Keepers.

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