Aquariums – Then and now

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, which most people know means water and the suffix -arium, which can be translates as “a place for relating to”.

This Latin origin of the word can be seen in many different languages and not only in romance languages like Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. The German and Dutch word for aquarium is for instance aquarium, Other European countries such as Sweden, Norway and Denmark has languages that only altered the speeling of the word a little 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 Bahasa a Indonesian language 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. One of the first species of fish to be displayed in Roman aquariums was the sea barble. Chinese aquariums were usually made out of porcelain and they were so important that the emperor himself greated a company for the production of big goldfish tubs.

Although occasional individuals continued to keep fish indoors after the fall of the Roman Empire, ornamental fish keeping didn’t really return to Europe until the 19th century. About 1830 Dr Nathaniel Ward invented a tank for keeping sensitive plants and tropical animals, the tank become known as an Wardian case. In the early 1840s Dr Ward started keeping aquatic plants but only with toy fish to begin with.

Another early example of aquarium keeping is from 1838 when French biologist Felix Dujardin noted owning a saltwater aquarium, although he did not use the term aquarium since it would take until 1854 before that name was introduced. The first balanced marine aquarium in London was set up and managed by Victorian marine zoologist Anna Thynne, who housed stony corals and seaweed. She was the first one the discover that coral in the genus Madrepora (“mother of pores”) have 3 different ways of reproducing. 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”.