An
aquarium (plural:
aquariums or
aquaria) is a
vivarium of any size having at least one transparent side in which water-dwelling plants or animals are kept and displayed.
Fishkeepers use aquaria to keep fish,
invertebrates, amphibians, aquatic reptiles such as turtles, and
aquatic plants. The term, coined by English naturalist
Philip Henry Gosse, combines the
Latin root
aqua, meaning water, with the suffix
-arium, meaning "a place for relating to". The aquarium principle was fully developed in 1850 by the chemist
Robert Warington, who explained that plants added to water in a container would give off enough oxygen to support animals, so long as their numbers do not grow too large. The aquarium craze was launched in early Victorian England by Gosse, who created and stocked the first
public aquarium at the
London Zoo in 1853, and published the first manual,
The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea in 1854.