New book on Paros to appear October 1st!

[helene schoubye]

During the last years monographs for many groups of aquarium fish have been published. But not for one group which contains only small, colourful, rare and threatened fish which are highly looked for by aquarists: the “Licorice Gouramies” of the genus Parosphromenus. Now Peter Finke and Martin Hallmann – two of the best experts on these fish – have filled that gap. Their comprehensive book (in German language) “Prachtguramis” with the subtitle “Juwelen des Urwalds in der Natur und im Aquarium” (Juwels of the Rainforest in Nature and in the Aquarium”) will be published on October 1st at Aqualog-Animalbook-GmbH as publisher. The price will be 29,80 Euros. Costs for shipment will be added.

The 200 pages are densely printed and filled with hundreds of photos of the best photographers (including the authors, and Michael Lo, Olivier Perrin, Günter Kopic, Horst Linke, Norbert Neugebauer and others) with informations on all aspects: beginning with the description of the “peat-swamps” in south-east Asia, their destruction, the distribution and habitats of those fish, the difficulties of finding them, the history of their detection, the detailed description of the different species and varieties, morphological and genetical problems, their detailed needs in the aquarium, their behaviour, their colour changes and communication, their breeding and raising, the role of the Parosphromenus-project as an international network for their sustainment and distribution and many additional informations.

For these fish, Germany is the world center since the main research on their aquaristic needs was carried out there some decades ago. But to get this book printed was very difficult indeed since many publishers feared that they could sell only 500 or 1000 copies. Normally, books on popular aquarium fish sell for tens of thousands. Therefore, at present it is not yet sure that there will ever be a translation into another language. There are some hundreds of enthusiastic friends of licorice gouramies spread in the whole world, but a book publisher is not impressed by that number. The authors are convinced that by seeing those wonderful illustrations and reading the densely packed informations the book would be bought by many more people who never cared for them before, but the printers in Britain and America are reluctant to try. Therefore, we recommend to order a copy of the German book nevertheless, since it could be sold out at the end of the year.

There is a link http://www.parobuch.de leading to a blog where you can have a look into some chapters and order the book. The front cover could be seen on the starting page of this Parosphromenus-project website. If you want to order the book from outside Germany, ask at info@parobuch.de for the costs of shipment. They are different.

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