WTFish?: “…arium” – What It Means
By Derek P.S. Tustin
"Derek Tustin is a member of the Durham Region Aquarium Society (DRAS), a club
located just outside of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. A prolific author on aquarium
related topics, he has had multiple articles published in Tank Talk, the publication
of DRAS (with reprints of several articles by aquarium societies across North America), has been published in Fishes of Sahul, the publication of the Australia and New
Guinea Fish Association (ANGFA), and is the recipient of the Federation of American Aquarium Societies (FAAS) Author of the Year Award for 2007, 2008 and
2011. Wanting to get to know and be known by aquarists across North America, he
has offered several original articles to The Tropical News. If you have comments,
criticism, or just want to say hi, feel free to e-mail Derek at:
[email protected]."
To me, one of the things I like best about our hobby is that there is
the ability to keep things straight, to specifically refer to what something really is by using the correct name. I tend to be a very logical
thinker, finding that if I correctly identify something, then somebody
else will (should?) know what I’m talking about. Oh, I struggle with it
from time-to-time, often knowing what something is really called, but
failing to correctly recall the name in the moment. Even so, there is
always a definitive name for something, able to be presented in the
form of a binomial name. Some of the names change over time (like
the fish that is now known as Platydoras armatulus being known for
years as Platydoras costatus, or the plant currently known as Hygroryza aristata initially being named Pharus aristatus in 1789,
changed to Zizania aristata in 1829 and then given its current name is
1833) but there is always a current name that all aquarists are able to
use to refer to the same organism.
But beyond that, have you ever thought about that one word that all
of us use? The one word that no matter our main area of interest, be
it cichlids, catfish, rainbowfish, livebearers, killifish, guppies, aquatic
plants or shrimp, the one word we all use and really can’t escape using? Of course, I am talking about the word “aquarium”.
Aquarium
Aquarium – a simple word really, but one that many of us have probably never thought much about. So, what is an aquarium? “Aquarium”
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is a combination of the Latin word for water, “aqua”, and the Latin suffix “-arium” which literally mean “a place for relating to”. So an aquarium is a “place for relating to water”.
Therefore, any vessel we use to contain something relating to a water
environment, be it a glass fish tank, glass bowl, pond or even a plastic bag, is by definition an aquarium. As I’ve touched on before, one
of the first cultures to keep fish in any form of captivity were the Sumerians, a civilization in what is now the region encompassing and
surrounding modern day Iraq. 4,500 years ago, they would trap fish
in artificial enclosures after monsoon flooding. As the floods would
recede, fish would remain trapped in these artificial enclosures. Admittedly, the purpose was to keep the fish as a source of food, but
they essentially created the first aquariums.
But that wasn’t the only historical culture to have kept fish. Both the
Roman Empire, where glass was first used as one wall of an enclosure to keep fish, and the Chinese of the 14th century and onwards,
where specialized porcelain tubs were created specifically for the
housing of fish, were active in keeping fish as ornamental pets. Moving into the 19th century, the hobby as we know it really started to take
root (pun intended if you are an aquatic horticulturist), with amateur
and professional scientists and naturalists starting to keep fish in captivity on a regular basis.
However, I once again draw your attention the literal definition of
aquarium in Latin, specifically a “place for relating to water”. By that
literal definition, we are not relating to the inhabitants of the water, but
only to the actual water itself. Technically, a swimming pool can be
considered to be an aquarium, because it is also a place for relating
to water. But the common usage when refer to an aquarium is an
aquarium as a form of a “vivarium”.
So, what you ask is a “vivarium”? Once again we look to the ancient
Latin where the word “vivus” was combined with the same root previously referenced to form the word vivarium. “Vivus” refers to living
creatures, and vivarium therefore literally means a “place relating to
living creatures”.
But just as an aquarium is a type of vivarium, we should be aware
that there are many other types of vivariums that influence our hobby,
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many of which we use. The one that most are probably familiar with
is the “terrarium”. Once again using the “-arium” suffix, this time the
Latin word “terra”, meaning earth or land, has been used, giving us
the literal definition of “a place relating to the earth”.
Terrarium
The origins of the modern day terrarium are actually very interesting.
Dr. Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward was a medical doctor living in England.
Born in 1791, he apparently was sent to Jamaica at the age of 13,
where he developed an interest in plants. As I’ve detailed in the past,
this was a time of great discovery in the world. The items had always
existed, and local cultures knew about local fauna, but this was the
first time that items from vast global distances were being compared
to one another on a regular basis. Much of this examination and discovery was undertaken by scientists and hobbyists living in Europe.
Items were shipped from newly discovered lands, and examined by
these men (and some women) at their leisure in homes and labs
across Europe. However, specimens, especially plants, often died en
route to Europe, and even more common was their death once they
arrived there due to the inability to maintain appropriate environments.
As mentioned, Dr. Ward had an interest is plants, with a personal collection that had in excess of 25,000 specimens at his death. But
many of these plants had to be preserved as they had died either en
route to or once they had reached him in London, England. Part of
the reason was the inability to provide adequate temperature and humidity, but another reason was that the air pollution in London at that
time was extremely pervasive. We must remember that coal smoke
and sulfuric acid saturated the air and caused a toxic environment
both outdoors and indoors. Once plants were exposed to the noxious
environment, especially with their coming from a “pure” environment”,
they usually quickly died.
Alongside his interest in plants, Dr. Ward’s also gathered a collection
of the cocoons of moths which he kept stored in sealed glass jars and
bottles. In one sealed bottle of this collection he noticed that a fern
spore and a species of grass had inadvertently been placed therein,
and both had germinated and started to grow in a bit of soil. Over a
period of four years he watched them grow, even getting to see the
grass bloom once. But at the end of that period the seal rusted, al-
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lowing the toxic London air to enter the bottle, killing the fern and
grass.
The four year long inadvertent experiment got Dr. Ward to thinking,
and as a result he created a glass and wood case that could be completely sealed off from the environment. He found that using this device, which came to be known as a “Wardian Case”, ferns could be
sealed off from the external environment, and would thrive. This device became instrumental in not only allowing plants to survive en
route to Europe, but also to thrive once they got there. In essence, Dr.
Ward had created the first terrarium.
Today terrariums are used for the keeping of small land animals
(especially reptiles, amphibians and terrestrial invertebrates) and for
the keeping of plants.
Paludarium & Riparium
Just as there is no clear divide in our
world between the aquatic and the terrestrial, so too have people sought to combine the world of the aquariums with the
world of terrariums. This has given rise
to a hybrid of the two, where both aquatic
and terrestrial environments are represented, called a “paludarium”. Using the
now familiar “-arium” suffix, this time it
has been attached to the Latin word
“paludal”, which means a marsh or
swamp, giving us a “place relating to a
marsh”.
I am currently keeping a 210 litre (56
gallon) aquarium which is only half
filled. The lower aquatic environment
has a small school of Chocolate Gouramis (Spahaerichthys osphromenoides) along with several species of
Cryptocoryne grown submersed.
The upper terrestrial half has several
designed planting ledges in which I
am growing some of the same Cryptocoryne species emersed, as well as several different species of AnuThe Sacramento Aquarium Society
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bias. This was something I designed based on my
personal desire to grow both the Cryptocoryne and
Anubias species emersed, and I basically did so
before I knew of the rapidly expanding paludarium community.
Another area of interest that
relates to paludariums,
but that has a subtle difference is a “riparium”.
Once again we find a Latin word, this time “ripa”,
meaning the bank of a
river or the shore of a
body of water, combined
with the Latin suffix “arium” to form a word
with the literal meaning
of a “place relating to a
shoreline or riverbank”.
Whereas a paludarium
has a terrestrial aspect,
or a portion of the setup made up out of rocks
or earth, in a riparium the shoreline is represented by plants, usually
planted in baskets attached to the rear or sides of the enclosure, or
floating on modified rafts on top of the water. There actually is no area of land, but rather it is inferred by the presence of emersed grown
plants, just as in nature plants on the shore overshadow the water
beneath.
Many members of aquarium societies have an interest in both aquatic
and terrestrial species, and if you do have such an interest and wish
to combine the two, you might consider maintaining a paludarium or
riparium in addition to separate aquariums and terrariums.
Anything we create that is a “place relating to…” is a type of “-arium”.
Any type of “-arium” that has to do with a living organism is a type of
vivarium. Therefore all aquariums are vivariums, but not all vivariums
are aquariums, and other forms of vivariums that we as hobbyists
may use or encounter include terrariums, paludariums and ripariums.
This list is not exhaustive, and we all know or have heard of other
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forms of “-arium” (e.g. oceanarium, seaquarium, herbarium, and planetarium to name a few), but the ones detailed above are the ones
you as an aquatic hobbyist are likely to encounter most often.
(Oh, and as a final note for those interested in the usage of the English language, the plural of aquarium can be either aquariums or
aquaria. Most of us use the term “aquariums”, so I’ve tried to do so
in this and other articles. But if you are doing some other reading
and see terraria, paludaria, or riparia, they mean the same thing as
terrariums, paludariums and riparium. It all has to do with “-arium”
being a Latin root and the plural of Latin words ending in “-ia”, versus
the “common” usage of society.)
Images from “The Toy Fish” by Albert J. Klee, Finley Aquatic
Books—Pascoag, RI. ISBN 0-9711999-1-4. Pages 1 and 50.
Editors note: the above book is in the SAS Library.
Pisces in the News
By Jack Kraft
How did fish learn to walk? DNA may provide a path
Excerpt from Sacramento Bee, April 18, 2013, page A9
In hope of reconstructing a pivotal step in evolution-the colonization
of land by fish that learn to walk and breathe air-researchers have decoded the genome of the coelacanth.
The coelacanth and the lungfish have long been battling for the honor
of which is closer to the ancestral fish that first used its fins to walk
on land and give rise to the tetrapods (all vertebrate animals, from
reptiles and birds to mammals).
While the lungfish may be closer related to the first tetrapod, its genome is an amazing 100 billion DNA units in length and cannot be
cracked with present methods. The coelacanths genome is much more
manageable at 2.8 million units of DNA, roughly about the same size
as a human genome.
Experts have found one gene that is related to those that, in mammal
species, build the placenta. While the coelacanth does not have a placenta, it is ovoviviparous. Another helpful preadaptation is a snippet
of DNA that drives the formation of limbs in embryos.
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