Back to Nature: Guide to L-Catfishes (Loricariidae)

Excellent

Great Pleco Book for Beginners. It has a lot of information on these types of fishes and clearly help with the identification of so many of them.

I purchased this book to find out how to keep and identify the L numbers plecs. The information of how to keep them is simple enough for the beginner and detailed enough for those who are already involved with these fasinating fish. The identification section of the book adds the size that the fish grow to, size of the tank, diet, water current and how hard they are to keep. A full and detailed book that I recommend to anyone involved in keeping these catfish.

Well worth buying as a Plecofanatic I can highly recommend this book A Interesting Book for the Avid fish keeper who wants to know how to know what species of plec they can see in the shops as some staff in some aquatic outlets do not have a clue what they are selling

I'm a long-time aquarium keeper (30+ years) as well as a book freak - I own thousands, including well over 100 aquarium-related books. And I must say this is one of the best-done, and at $30 is a bargain. The author in the intro tells us that his primary reasons for writing this book were to create a low-cost source for the L-catfish, and to provide info to help aquarists who are new to these fish. He succeeds brilliantly.The production values are extremely high. Nice heavy, glossy pages. Tons and tons of extremely high-quality photos. This is a book that is beautiful to look at as well as easy to use.For content, the first 54 pages are info about the Loricarid Family in general. It starts with general info about Loricarids, what to consider when buying one, sexing them, breeding them, common diseases, care and feeding, where they coe from, and so on. It is really a fairly in-depth coverage that doesn't really get bogged down.After this is the "encyclopedic" coverage of the L-catfish (L standing for Loricariidae, the scientific Family name). It includes all the expected info about each species (what they eat, size, temperature range, source/distribution, etc. etc.), and shows both juvenile and adult forms for most. The fish are organized by genus, with each genus in alphabetical order (i.e., the genus Acanthicus comes first, then Ancistomus, etc.).But where this book really adds value is that it does more than just show all of the L-catfish and contain lots of pictures (which in itself would have been enough to get 5 stars at this price). Each species has descriptive text that includes any common Trade Names, Distribution (where it's found), Breeding info, and most valuable, Remarks. The Remarks are any info that doesn't fit neatly into other categories. This may include things like whether it is good for beginners, if its diet tends to be highly carniverous instead of vegitarian, if it's been bred in captivity, reasons for color variations, and so on.Bottom line: if you are into L-catfish all, this is a must-buy book. If you can afford only one book on Loricariids, then this is the one you want to buy (if you can afford more, Aqualog's Loricariidae by Schraml and Schafer is also outstanding, albeit expensive). If you like aquarium fish and enjoy a good book, then this is defiitely one you should add to your personal library. This is an outstanding book that should be a part of any serious aquarist's library, and probably should be a part of any casual aquarist's library as well.

This book is pretty nice has a good amount of L numbers but not as many as I wanted. I was also hoping for a bigger section on pleco dieseases so I can know what to look for if anything were to happen cause google has lots of sites that can help but majority of the time are completely off topic on what I am looking for. Besides those two negatives its a great book and I think anyone who likes plecos should have a copy of it.