Aquariums – Then and now
One of the leading public aquariums in the world today Monteray Bay aquarium
The tradition of keeping fish and other aquatic creatures in captivity indoors goes back at least as far as the Roman Empire, and the Chinese began moving their gold carps back and forth between ornamental outdoor ponds and small indoor display containers during the Tang Dynasty (618-907). The word aquarium is a combination of the Latin word aqua, meaning water, and the Latin suffix -arium, which roughly means “a place for relating to”.
The word has stayed roughly the same in many languages around the world and can be understood in most languages and not just the romance languages that are based on latin such as Spanish and Italian. The German and Dutch word for aquarium is for instance aquarium, and the Scandinavian languages Swedish, Danish and Norwegian have only altered the spelling a bit to Akvarium. The term aquarium can also be found with only smaller varitions in a lot of none European languages such as akuarium in the Indonesian language Bahasa and akwaryum in Tagalog, a language spoken in the Philippines.
The earliest of the Roman aquariums were made from marble, but around the year 50 glass panes were incorporated in the design. The sea barble was one of the first fish species to become popular as aquarium fish in Ancient Rome. In China, ornamental fish tanks were traditionally made out of porcelain and in 1369 the hobby was so important that Emperor H³ngw founded a porcelain company for the manufacturing of large goldfish tubs.
After the fall of the Roman Empire the aquarium became rare in Europe even though some people kept indoor aquariums and the aquarium didn’t get popular again until during the 19th century. Around 1830 Dr Nathaniel Ward invented the Wardian case; a closely-fitted glazed wooden case that served as protection for sensitive ferns and a few years later he proposed to use his tanks to keep tropical animals. In the early 1840s Dr Ward started keeping aquatic plants but only with toy fish to begin with.
A French biologist namned Felix Dujardin was another pioneer in the moden aquarium hobby and he noted that he owned a saltwater aquarium in 1838 allthough he didn’t use the term aquarium as the term didn’t come in use until 1854. The first balanced marine aquarium in London was set up and managed by Victorian marine zoologist Anna Thynne, who housed stony corals and seaweed. Thynne was the one who discovered the three separate ways of reproduction carried out by members of the coral genus Madrepora (”mother of pores”). In 1850, the Chemical Society journal published an article on the keeping of goldfish, snails and eelgrass together in a 13-gallon container a feat accomplished by agricultural chemist Robert Warington.
The later Vicorian Era was a time when keeping fish and tropical fish quickly became more popular, more fashionable, this process gained a lot of momentum after the great exhibition of 1851 where an ornate cast iron framed aquarium was being displayed to the visitors. Two years after the exhibition, London Zoo opened the first large public aquarium in the world the Fish House.
I mentioned before that the term aquarium didn’t gain any widespread use before 1954 when Philip Henry Gosse used the term in his popular book “The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea”.
