Reef Fishes of the East Indies is a must have

by | Jul 22, 2012 | Fish, Science | 0 comments


It took me a long time to purchase the three volume set of taxonomic goodness ‘Corals of the World’ by Veron because the price tag scared me but since I bit the bullet three years ago, I have been referencing those books regularly. Now, that three volume set has a fishy sister set ‘ Reef Fishes of the East Indies’ by Allen and Erdmann, and instead of waiting I purchased it as soon as it became available.  I couldn’t be happier with the purchase, and if you are anything like me (and I know you are because you are reading a reefkeeping blog site) and you don’t have these books in your hands already, you should click the link below and order them.

The set contains concise descriptions of each of the 2,631 currently known reef fish species from the region (25 new to science), and features over 3,600 color photographs – of which approximately 40% have never before been seen in print. Careful attention to detail has been paid to illustrate the morphological variances between species and within species to differentiate between the sexes and life stages, as well as those species that have multiple regionally specific color patterns. The books are beautiful and chock full of information and eye candy.

Sure the set costs 250 bucks, but you probably have at least that sitting around in the form of a box of no longer used equipment. Get on your favorite forum, sell that stuff and click here to order a set of books that you will reference for years to come.

  • Rich Ross

    Richard Ross currently works as an Aquatic Biologist at the Steinhart Aquarium in the California Academy of Sciences, maintaining many exhibits including the 212,000 gallon Philippine Coral Reef. He has kept saltwater animals for over 25 years, and has worked in aquarium maintenance, retail, wholesale and has consulted for a coral farm/fish collecting station in the South Pacific. Richard enjoys all aspects of the aquarium hobby and is a regular author for trade publications, a frequent speaker at aquarium conferences and was a founder of one of the largest and most progressive reef clubs in Northern California, Bay Area Reefers. He is an avid underwater videographer and has been fortunate to scuba dive in a lot of places around the world. At home he maintains a 300 gallon reef system and a 250 gallon cephalopod/fish breeding system, and was one of the first people to close the life cycle of Sepia bandensis. When not doing all that stuff, he enjoys spending time with his patient wife, his incredible daughter and their menagerie of animals, both wet and dry.

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