Fishkeeping is a popular hobby, practiced by aquarists, concerned with keeping fish in a home aquarium or garden pond. It is a practice that encompasses the art of maintaining one's own aquatic ecosystem, featuring a lot of variety with various water systems, all of which have their own unique features and requirements. Fishkeeping primarily serves as a token of appreciation and fascination for marine life and the environment that surrounds such, along with other purposes such as the piscicultural fishkeeping industry, serving as a branch of agriculture, being one of the most widespread methods of cultivating fish for commercial profit.

Fishkeeping has existed for thousands of years, with some of the earliest known fishkeepers being Sumerians around 2500 BCE. During this period, aquarium owners did not fully understand the environmental requirements necessary to sustain marine life. Over time fishkeeping evolved as knowledge of aquatic biology improved, leading to the development of specialized tanks for different species and the incorporation of aquatic plants to create more balanced and natural habitats.

Fish have been raised as food in pools and ponds for thousands of years. Brightly colored or tame specimens of fish in these pools have sometimes been valued as pets rather than food. Many cultures, ancient and modern, have kept fish for both functional and decorative purposes.

Ancient Sumerians kept wild-caught fish in ponds, before preparing them for meals. Depictions of the sacred fish of Oxyrhynchus kept in captivity in rectangular temple pools have been found in ancient Egyptian art.

Similarly, Asia has experienced a long history of stocking rice paddies with freshwater fish suitable for eating, including various types of catfish and cyprinid. Selective breeding of carp into today's popular and completely domesticated koi and fancy goldfish began over 2,000 years ago in Japan and China, respectively. The Chinese brought goldfish indoors during the Song dynasty to enjoy them in large ceramic vessels.

In medieval Europe, carp pools were a standard feature of estates and monasteries, providing an alternative to meat on feast days when meat could not be eaten for religious reasons.

Marine fish have been similarly valued for centuries. Wealthy Romans kept lampreys and other fish in salt water pools. Tertullian reports that Asinius Celer paid 8000 sesterces for a particularly fine mullet. Cicero reports that the advocate Quintus Hortensius wept when a favored specimen died. Rather cynically, he referred to these ancient fishkeepers as the Piscinarii, the "fish-pond owners" or "fish breeders", for example when saying that "the rich (I mean your friends the fish-breeders) did not disguise their jealousy of me".

The first person to breed a tropical fish in Europe was Pierre Carbonnier, who founded one of the oldest public aquaria in Paris in 1850, and bred the first imported Macropods (Paradise fish) in 1869, and later more species. A pioneer of tropical fish breeding, Carbonnier was awarded the Gold Medal of the Imperial French Acclimatization Society in 1875 for research and breeding of exotic freshwater aquarium fish, and for his success in introducing exotic fish species to France.