Aquarium

Most often, an aquarium is understood as a home (indoor) aquarium for keeping aquarium fish at home; for technical reasons, the maximum volume of such an aquarium usually does not exceed one cubic meter. Public aquariums designed to demonstrate aquatic flora and fauna to viewers and existing as part of zoos or as separate entertainment and educational institutions may exceed 3000 m3 in volume. The world's largest container for keeping sea creatures is located in the Chime-Long Ocean Kingdom amusement park in the Chinese city of Zhuhai. According to the Guinness Book of Records, its volume is 22.7 million liters (22.7 thousand m3). This aquarium also has the largest plexiglass panel area (39.6 x 8.3 m) and, having no analogues in the world, an underwater hall with a diameter of 12 m[1].

The aquarium can contain almost any living creatures that naturally live in water: marine and freshwater fish, plants, crustaceans, mollusks, amphibians, reptiles and corals.

Various devices are used to maintain biological balance in the aquarium: aerators, mechanical and biological filters, thermoregulators, thermometers and much more. Description of ecosystem modeling in a closed artificial reservoir and various aspects of fish breeding is engaged in aquariums.

Terrariums, paludariums and aquaterrariums are distinguished from aquariums, intended for the maintenance of land and swamp animals and plants.

Since ancient times, water has caused superstitious fear and interest in people at the same time. It was attributed mystical properties and inhabited by fabulous creatures: mermaids, water and other characters. Religions worshipping the sea gods arose in different parts of the earth: Anu, Ea, Neptune, Vatea, Ocean, Atargatis, Aphrodite, Kabira, Ishtar and others.

The ancient Egyptians and Chinese were the first lovers of the content of aqua-living creatures (aqua in Greek water). The Chinese hold the right of the first breeders of aquarium fish, in particular the maintenance and breeding of carp goldfish, engaged in this business approximately for 2 or 3 thousand years.

The first real aquarium with plants, golden and silver carp was arranged at home by the English scientist H. Ward in 1841. His compatriot E. Lankester was successfully able to breed three-needle sticklebacks in captivity in 1848. Thanks to the efforts of the French naturalist P. Carbonnier, exotic cockerel fish and macropods joined the domestic aqua kingdom in 1874.

The beginning of the aquarium maintenance of fish and plants in Russia was laid by the First Acclimatization Exhibition in Moscow in 1863.

Small aquarium - volume up to 25 liters.

Medium-sized — 25-100 liters.

Large — 100-250 liters.

Dutch Aquarium

Freshwater

Pseudomore. Aquariums of this type, as a rule, do not contain plants, are decorated with a large number of stones resembling corals, the water hardness is usually quite high - up to 20 °. Lamps that give a cold bluish tint are used for lighting. Usually such an aquarium is inhabited by cichlids of African lakes, which feel comfortable in water with high hardness, and their bright and multicolored coloring are a little like the inhabitants of coral reefs.

Dutch. The main inhabitants of the Dutch aquarium are plants. As a rule, the planting density is such that if you look at the aquarium from above, you should not be able to see the soil. Lamps with specially selected phosphor having special spectral characteristics and increased light output are used for lighting. With the density of plantings characteristic of this type of aquarium, it is impossible to do without the use of complex fertilizers and water enrichment systems with carbon dioxide.

A marine aquarium is much more complicated in content and is very different from freshwater ones. If you can safely drain a third of the water from a freshwater aquarium and top up with clean fresh water, then such water replacements in marine aquariums are difficult due to the large consumption of sea salt. Therefore, in marine aquariums, the problem of water quality is solved not by replacing, but by using rather complex equipment for natural regeneration and purification devices - foam separation columns (flotators, skimmers). The second difference from a freshwater aquarium is the presence of a current. The sea currents are quite strong, so aquariums with coral reefs are equipped with strong pumps that create an imitation of the sea current. They are divided into reef and fish. In reef aquariums, more sophisticated equipment and powerful lighting with a color temperature of 10000K are installed (in particular, metal halide lamps are installed) to ensure the necessary conditions for the maintenance of marine invertebrates. It is highly desirable to have so-called "living stones" in such aquariums, acting as a biological filter due to the bacteria and other organisms inhabiting them. Fish marine aquariums are significantly more similar to their freshwater counterparts.

Existing aquariums are divided into two main types: decorative and special, which are divided as follows:

Decorative - the most common type of aquarium, which serves mainly for the maintenance of aquatic organisms for aesthetic purposes:

• the general aquarium is inhabited by hydrobionts from different systematic groups;
• the collection aquarium is populated by close taxonomic groups, for example, fish of the same family;
• the species aquarium is inhabited by fish of only one species.

Special is an aquarium designed for specific tasks: incubation of eggs, rearing of young animals, breeding and treatment of fish, conducting various experiments and experiments:

• spawning - an aquarium to create certain conditions that stimulate breeding; in size, as a rule, less decorative;
• outgrowth — used for growing young fish moved from a spawning aquarium;
• species - an aquarium that serves to keep fish of only one species, for example, an aquarium with discus;
• breeding - an aquarium designed to breed new breeds of fish or correct the decorative qualities of an existing breed (color, shape and size of fins, etc.); usually a lot of breeding aquariums are used to select fish with the right characteristics and their subsequent crossing;
• quarantine, or jigging — can be used both for temporary maintenance of acquired new fish before transferring to a common aquarium, and for temporary isolation and treatment of fish with signs of illness that were previously in a common aquarium;
• biotope aquariums are aquariums, the composition of whose inhabitants reproduces the composition of a natural biotope: a standing pond, a swamp, a slow river, a lake, etc.; plant and fish species are selected in the aquarium, which also live together in nature, while other environmental parameters are recreated as much as possible: water parameters pH, DH (hardness), soil composition, illumination, temperature.