Aquarium History

The aquarium (from aqua, Latin for water) is the most common type of vivarium.  Most of them are considered to be those made of glass or transparent plastic, which are filled with water.  With the addition of fish and invertebrates, such as mollusks or crustaceans, and aquatic plants and soil materials, usually sand or gravel, the aquarium is a live, underwater world.

Specialized zoos for aquatic animals also describe themselves as an aquarium.
Formerly, the basement in pharmacies where liquid drugs in bottles, barrels, etc. were stored was called an “aquarium”

In England, pools were designated a “aquariums”, the term being used then not in reference to the greenhouses for the care of aquatic animals, but to water.

The modern concept of the aquarium was built from nineteenth century practice.

The farming of fish in an artificial environment has a long history. Already, the Sumerians caught fish in ponds, which they prepared for meals.  The same practice is known from ancient Egypt.  From the Early Dynastic period until the New Kingdom, the temple gardens were always equipped with rectangular water basins.  There is an artificial fish pond with tilapia on a wall painting from the tomb of Nebamun, from around 1400 BC.

In the Egyptian gardens there also tended to be relatively small artificial ponds and pools that had a central role to play. An ancient Egyptian garden model, which is now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, notes pools of water framed by sycamores throughout almost the entire garden area. Because of pictures that have been found in the excavation site Oxyrhynchus, we know that these were fish tanks.

Similarly old is the fish-farming in China.  The selective breeding of carp probably began about 2,500 years ago, the oldest book dates back to fishing in the time from 770 to 476 BC.  Domestication of the Silberkarausch goldfish started during the Song Dynasty (960-1216 AD), and from the early sixteenth century it has been demonstrated that goldfish were kept in large ceramic vessels and in stores.

In 1596 the first book about the aquarium, written by Chi’en Chang-te, entitled Chu yu sha p’u, or Treatise on the Goldfish, appeared.