The salt-water aquarium in the home,

This book is of tremendous historical importance to marine aquarists. Straughan was one of the first in the US to successfully keep marine fish and invertebrates, and one of the discoverers of the nitrogen cycle that we find so obvious today. His writing style is very intimate, and as in most of his books, you feel like you are in the room with him. There are some really cool stories in here about his various successes and failures. He is often forgotten nowadays, but without him there would be no Saltwater Hobby today. This is not the first edition of this book, if you are a collector, but it remains the classsic first book on modern aquarium keeping.

I believe this book should be on the shelf of any marine aquarist but not the only book and certainly not the first book. It was one of my favorites on the subject but it is unfortunately outdated. I wavered for that reason for a while between giving the book five stars for my affection for the book but three stars because so many advancements in keeping marine aquariums have been made since this books was first printed. Much of the book is about Straughan and his own experiences but it is not done in a boastful way and it actually makes the book more delightful. One should know that this was written by a resident of Florida who had access to the sea where he many times collected as opposed to many of we aquarists who are landlocked. Some of Straughan's ideas presented in this book are experimental and I would not want the beginner to be swayed by these ideas. This used to be a must have for the beginner but it is no longer.