The aquarium hobby of today has little in common with the hobby of a century ago in terms of technology. It wasn’t until the 1920s that electricity was widely available in homes, and without electrical power, there could be no aquarium technology. The development of most of today’s fishkeeping technology really started in the 1950s. Yet aquariums were kept long before any of this technology was available.
What is known today as the “natural” aquarium was known as the “balanced” aquarium in the 1800s and early 1900s. The idea behind this term was that when everything in the tank was in balance, then the fish would thrive in captivity. Balance was another way of saying “natural.”
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