Wikipedia:Today's featured article/January 28, 2005

An aquarium is a clear-sided container (typically constructed of glass or high-strength plastic) in which water-dwelling plants and animals (usually fish and sometimes invertebrates) are kept in captivity. Aquarium keeping is a popular hobby around the world, with about 60 million enthusiasts worldwide. From the 1850s, when the predecessor of the modern aquarium was first developed as a novel curiosity, the ranks of aquarists have swelled as more sophisticated systems including lighting and filtration systems were developed to keep aquarium fish healthy. Public aquaria reproduce the home aquarist's hobby on a grand scale &mdash; the Osaka Aquarium, for example, brags of a tank of nearly 5.3 million litres (1.4 million U.S. gallons) and a collection of about 580 species of aquatic life. The careful aquarist dedicates considerable effort to maintaining a tank ecology that mimics its inhabitants' natural habitat. Controlling water quality includes managing the inflow and outflow of nutrients, most notably the management of waste produced by tank inhabitants. (more...)

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