2 
BELDT'S AQUARIUM, ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI 
LET US HELP YOU SUCCEED WITH YOUR 
WATER GARDEN 
With the thought in mind of assisting our customers as much as possible in 
order to avoid costly mistakes and probable failures, we have made this catalog 
more than a mere price list and have included a lot of valuable information for 
the care and propagation of fancy fish and lilies. 
There is nothing that will afford so 
much pleasure and that will so quickly 
captivate the mind and hold it away 
from your daily toil than an aquarium 
with fancy fish. No other medium 
will reproduce so completely a perfect¬ 
ly balanced bit of nature in your living 
room as an aquarium. 
A water lily pool, no matter how 
small, is usually the center of interest 
in any garden; unlike the usual garden 
flowers, water lilies need no hoeing, 
weeding or watering, and there is very 
little work left to do after everything 
in your pool is planted. The new rare 
colors and fragrant flowers produced 
in recent years have created an im¬ 
mense interest in water gardening. 
You are missing something tremend¬ 
ously interesting and educational if 
you do not know the pleasure and pas¬ 
time afforded in water gardening, 
whether it may be an out-door lily pool 
surrounded by a rock garden, or an 
aquarium in a sun room containing the 
many interesting and beautiful toy 
tropicals and beautiful foliage of 
aquatic plants. Modern science and 
knowledge have greatly contributed 
ways and means that enable you to en¬ 
joy water gardening with ease and a 
minimum of labor and expenditures. 
No other hobby offers so much 
healthful recreation, genuine satisfac¬ 
tion, and so many educational features 
for the entire family as an aquarium. 
The aquarium is the only possibility 
through which you can convert as little 
as two square feet of space into a per¬ 
fectly balanced bit of nature that has 
not the appearance of being artificially 
restricted and limited. A balanced 
aquarium is a little world in which you 
can see the inhabitants as contented 
and playful as in their native habitat. 
The unlimited variety of plant and fish 
life obtainable makes aquarium keep¬ 
ing an ever fascinating hobby. 
If you own an aquarium or a lily 
pool, you are enjoying something tre¬ 
mendously worth while. If you have 
never owned one, you have missed the 
most pleasing experience of your life. 
Many fanciers have discovered that 
the keeping of an aquarium or lily 
pool is extremely simple once you have 
secured the proper material and the 
proper information we offer you in this 
catalogue. A complete variety of all 
necessities which are required for 
aquarium success is listed in this book¬ 
let. 
It has always been our desire and 
pleasure to help you as much as pos¬ 
sible with your knotty problems; please 
do not hesitate to write for informa¬ 
tion. 
It has been seven years since I had 
my picture in the catalogue. Many of 
the old customers will remember it. 
Quite often someone will stop in at 
the office and say, "I guess you don’t 
remember me?” And then wait to see 
what happens. I am embarrassed by 
visitors who stop in from all four cor¬ 
ners of the globe, who presume that I 
have an unfailing memory for names, 
although my memory for faces is bet¬ 
ter. I still find a great deal of pleasure 
in my job. I have been running this 
Tropical Fish and Water Lily business 
now for 18 years and write hundreds 
of letters each month, giving as much 
information as is possible to give in a 
letter. Quite often correspondence de¬ 
velops into more than a casual ac¬ 
quaintance, so that when Mr. Jones 
happens to be in St. Louis and stops 
OTTO C. BELDT 
in to say hello, it almost seems that 
I haven’t seen him for years. Human 
interest in water gardening is universal. 
We get letters here from all over the 
world. Last summer I received a 
package of radish seeds from a fancier 
in Shanghai, native Chinese radishes, 
of course. I want to say thanks, in fact, 
that’s what I wanted to say to begin 
with, for your confidence and for the 
orders you have given me in the past. 
Very truly yours, 
An average 
order for tropi¬ 
cal or goldfish 
weighs from 10 
to 20 lbs. In 
order that you 
may determine 
express or par¬ 
cel post rates 
from St. Louis 
we are listing 
below 5 lb. par¬ 
cel post rates 
and 20 lb. ex¬ 
press rates. 
Approximate Parcel Post Rates on 5-Lb. Packages 
Local 
1st and 
3rd Zone 
4th Zone 
5 th Zone 
6th Zone 
7th Zone 
8th Zone 
50 
2nd Zone 
150 to 300 
300 to 600 
600 to 1000 
1000 to 14001400 to 1800 
over 1800 
miles 
50 to 150 
miles 
miles 
miles 
miles 
miles 
miles 
9c 
miles 
13c 
17c 
24c 
33c 
40c 
50c 
59c 
Approximate Express Rates on 20-Lb. Cans Live Fish 
Second Zone Third Zone Fourth Zone Fifth Zone Sixth Zone Seventh Zone 
20 lb.—38c 20 lb.—69c 20 lb.—84c 20 lb.—$1.23 20 lb.—$1.82 20 lb.—$2.26 
