Neale Monks takes a look at how community tanks have evolved, and offers three suggestions for a modern set up.
FISHKEEPING AS WE know it goes back to the mid-Victorian era, with mass-produced ‘parlour aquaria’ being shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Books extolled the virtues of the balanced aquarium, using sunshine to keep plants alive. Since heating was difficult to provide most aquarists chose coldwater species like sticklebacks and goldfish.
It wasn’t until 1869 that the first tropical fish species was successfully imported into Europe: the paradisefish, Macropodus opercularis. But that species is incredibly hardy, not just able to tolerate cold conditions for long periods, but also able to breathe air when its aquatic habitat turns stagnant. It wasn’t until the 1920s, when air transport became available to fish collectors, that other tropical fish species were traded commercially. Over the next few years, planes and airships would bring all sorts of species to wholesalers in America and Europe.
Innes and his community tank suggestions
American aquarist Innes (the man after whom the neon tetra, Parachierodon innesi, is named) did as much to popularise the new hobby as anyone else, publishing the first ever fishkeeping periodical, The Aquarist, in 1932. Three years later he wrote the first properly comprehensive aquarium encyclopaedia, Exotic Aquarium Fishes. This landmark book really deserves an article in itself, not just for its quality, but also for the way it laid down the community tank principles aquarists have followed ever since.
For a start, he chooses species that were easily obtained, and unsurprisingly, many of his favoured species are ones that remain popular to the present day. Although he doesn’t say much about water chemistry, what he does do is assume the fish have similar needs in terms of aeration and temperature. He also expected live plants to do their part in ensuring aquarium health.
Where Innes falls short of modern expectations is in terms of stocking density. At the time, aquaria were not just expensive but heavy, and as often as not, aquarists built their own from plate glass and slate (slate was used for the bottom of the tank). Consequently, many people would need to stock quite small tanks; 5-10 (US) gallon tanks being particularly popular. So it is that Innes recommends the following for a 5 US gallon (18-litre) aquarium: six bloodfin tetras, two ricefish, one paradisefish, one
