Historical background. The earliest known aquarists were the , who kept fishes in artificial ponds at least 4,50....

The earliest known aquarists were the , who kept fishes in artificial ponds at least 4,500 years ago; records of fish keeping also date from ancient Egypt and Assyria. Although goldfish were successfully kept in glass vessels in England during the middle 1700s, aquarium keeping did not become well established until the relationship between oxygen, animals, and plants became known a century later. By 1928 there were 45 public or commercial aquariums throughout the world, but growth then slowed and few new large aquariums appeared until after World War II. The emphasis in this type of aquarium is on very large tanks, up to 1,000,000 gallons each, in which a great variety of fishes is placed with no attempt to separate them.