I had the Same question a while ago and found this article very fun to read about the origin and growth of the hobby!
hope you enjoy it!
A History of the Hobby by Roger Vitko - Reefkeeping.com
Nice read. I was around for most of the article's information. I even knew Julian and Martin Moe before they were famous
Some things missing in the article pertaining to Freshwater fish, is the development of the Betta (a.k.a. Siamese fighting fish.) In one of my most trusted books, (handbook of tropical Aquarium Fishes) which was first printed in 1955, the section on Bettas states that the fish had been collected and maintained for fighting purposes for " several hundred years" with the domestication and cultivation of the fish only occurring within the past 100 years. ( May need to be updated to 150 years today.)
The section in the book pertaining to Goldfish keeping states" The intense interest of the Chinese and Japanese have shown in domesticating the goldfish goes back possibly 1,350 years to the T'ang dynasty (618-907 A.D.)"
So as you can see, keeping fish is not a new hobby by any stretch.
In fact, many of today's methods are just improvements to methods used years ago. (BTW, back in the 1960s and 70s, with just a basic understanding of fish keeping that we had, we managed to keep fish alive and very healthy without all the "extras" being used today. I was breeding many varieties of fish back then so we must have been doing something right.
)
Hope this helps
