Changes

Where fish tanks did exist, they were mostly for private use in the ancient world. Fish ponds did, however, became more public spaces in Medieval Europe, as cities and towns developed these as places to store fish for food and raise them as a type of fish farm. In the 17th century, goldfish were introduced to Europe, which, for the first time, brought a type of fish that exclusively was bred for its looks rather than taste. With the development of palatial gardens, goldfish, similar to China and Japan, began to be raised as ornamental animals.<ref>For more on fish ponds in Medieval Europe, see: Adamson, M.W. (2004) Food in medieval times. <i>Food through history.</i> Westport, Conn, Greenwood Press, pg. 42.</ref>

While interest in ornamental fish increased in Europe with greater access to wealth and contacts with China, the main development that made public aquariums took time to develop. The major development was the innovation of the Wardian case, which was a type of glass container used to house plants. This development by Jeanne Villepreux-Power in 1832 was made for the study of plants, but it was soon realized that live fish could be contained within these glass enclosures. Soon after, others began to experiment with tropical fish, where they were placed in tanks to see how they would respond. It was evident to scientists that plants that lived in water provided oxygen that fish could use, allowing tropical fish in particular to be kept indefinitely so long as the number of plants was sufficient for the number of fish.<ref>For more on early fish tanks, see: Hibberd, S. (2017) <i>The Aquarium and Water-Cabinet.</i>Nikosia, TP Verone Publishing.</ref>

Mostly, until about the 1850s, fish keeping in aquarium was the privy of scientists or those wealthy enough to have such interests. Things changed after the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. The first large public aquariums were now built in places such as the London Zoo (in 1853) that were mostly metal-framed structures created by Phillip Gosse, who used the term aquarium for the first time. The "Fish House" was created as the first public aquarium in the London Zoo, where it pioneered the use of a series of fish tank containers along the walls and other exhibits in the main floor of a dedicated building to fish. Now it became fashionable to collect exotic and strange species as public curiosity increased. Soon, other cities in Europe, such as Paris, and North America began to build large public aquariums (Figure 2).<ref>For more on the early public aquariums, see: Kisling, 2000</ref>