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Large public aquariums have become fixtures in most major urban regions. In some places, they have become among the leading attractions for city tourism, where many aquariums have also expanded into conservation efforts and applied research along with being tourist destinations. The history of such aquariums is not completely modern, although the form in which we know aquariums today is mostly a recent development.

===Development of the Public Aquarium===

Where fish tanks did exist, they were mostly for private use in the ancient world. Fish ponds did, however, become 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 initially so that they can be studied and observed. Although this development by Jeanne Villepreux-Power in 1832 was made for the study of plants, it was soon realized that live fish could be contained within these glass enclosures along with the plants for long periods. Soon after, others began to experiment with a variety of fish species, 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 may types of fish 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 aquariums 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 aquarium was built at the London Zoo (in 1853) in Regents Park, where the tanks were mostly metal-framed structures created by Phillip Gosse, who used the term aquarium for the first time. The so-called "Fish House" in the London Zoo 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, which now provided the odel for other zoos and dedicated aquariums to emulate. Now it became fashionable to collect exotic and strange species for public display, particularly as public curiosity fueled interest. By the 1850s and 1860s, 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>

===Summary===

Modern aquariums largely began to develop in the 1830s; however, their concepts go back much further. Although ancient Near East and Egyptian societies likely kept fish and perhaps even pet fish, Chinese cultures were the first to greatly focus on raising fish specifically for their ornamental looks and display. A great limitation was fish tanks and ways to allow fish to easily breath did not develop for some time. In fact, it was only in the 20th century that artificial pumps have allowed a variety of tanks and fish species to be kept. New pump technologies and sealants for fish tanks have now made aquariums relatively easy to keep, helping to make fish, today, the most common form of pet globally.

==References==

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