True cichlidophiles will relish the release of this book on African cichlids, by Greg Steeves, Dave Hansen and Anton Lamboj.
It’s not really a book for beginners, catering more for intermediate to expert cichlid keepers with a taste for all things African — particularly the haplochromines.
If you’ve noticed the trickle of unusual and non-Malawian haplochromine cichlids coming into the UK and have kept, bred and attempted to collect them, this is the book for you.
The newly available species are covered, including Astatotilapia burtoni, sp. ’thick skin’, A. latifasciata, A. aeneocolor and A. calliptera, along with others like Thoracochromis brauschi, Pundamilia nyererei, Paralabidochromis, Pseudocrenilabrus and Orthochromis.
There’s more too, like Haplochromis, Harpagochromis, Lithochromis, Mbipia, Neochromis, Prognathochromis and others.
This book is more readable, approachable and applicable to keeping these fish in aquariums than Ole Seehausen’s Lake Victoria Rock Cichlids, which, although written by an absolute authority, does bend the brain…
Profiles include an overview of the genus, aquarium care, size, water parameters and descriptions of behaviour and breeding, if available. Many photographs are actually of aquarium fish and descriptions feel very first hand.
This is a true reference for the haplochromine cichlid collector — one who wants to get into these fascinating fish or who’s also interested in their ecology and conservation.
Previous cichlid knowledge is a must, requiring specifically actual experience of keeping these busy, colourful, hyper-dominant fish.
It’s going in my collection and because so few people have kept the rarer stuff it’s reassuringly niche too. This book will keep the hobbyist collectors busy easily for the next ten years — by which time the next set of endangered, rare, newly discovered and recently rediscovered haplochromine cichlids will be available.
Price: £16 (shipping extra) from Grandapublishing.com
ISBN: 978-3-85374-399-7