A Subiaco Aquarium (1928).
The following article is about a man in Subiaco breeding food including mosquito larvae to feed his oriental fish (Japanese gold and variegated fantails and midget rice fish) with dreams of opening an aquarium.
The Western Australian post office directories show that Mr Ernest E. Prout lived at 213 Townshend Street Subiaco with his wife Irene occupying the house from 1916 until around 1958. Irene, then a widow moved to Mosman Park to live near her son, Neville.
The City of Subiaco - Community Heritage Survey wrote about the house at 213 Townshend Road and gives a history of occupants including Ernest and Irene Prout....
"...Ernest Prout was a photographer, who had previously worked as a grocer in Boulder and then Guildford. In 1946 Neville his son (also a photographer) provided the following explanation for Ernest's change of career:
'It happened like this,' He says 'Pop tells me that about 30 years he was working in a grocer's shop in Guildford. He saw an American magazine carrying an advertisement for cameras which would take and develop photos in a minute or two. The idea intrigued him and he sent for one. It went up on the shelf at home for a could years but then Pop started experimenting on the back lawn and turned out good pictures. He decided to make a break, and gave up his job. He hasn't work for a boss since. '...Prout's camera is a camera and dark room in one and it uses no film. The negative is sensitised paper. This is re-photographed and developed and there is the picture - all in five minutes at 2/ a print. Prout says there are only five men in the business in this State - four in Perth, one in Kalgoorlie. Cameras for the job are not on the market. When he started he made two themselves.
From the 1920's Ernest also developed another interest into a home business while continuing to work as a photographer. In 1938 it was reported that he had been breeding fish for 17 years and, at the time of the report, had more than 2,000 goldfish in the back yard at 213 Townshend Road. Advertisements of the time show that, by the 1930's. He was operating this part of his business as Prout's Aquarium - selling fish, water plants and other supplies."
The articles are from Trove, the database of the National Library of Australia. No copyright infringement intended.
Western Mail, 26 January 1928.
À SUBIACO AQUARIUM.
Fish and Mosquitoes.
It will surprise many Western Australians to learn that a Subiaco resident (Mr. E.A. Prout) has for the past six years been breeding, at his home, Oriental fish (Japanese gold and varigated fantails and the midget rice fish) with the object of opening an aquarium on a worthy scale in Perth.
He has many hundreds of his "finny pets," in about forty vessels of various size-ranging from cement troughs of 100 gallons to glass aquaria of 60, 20, 10 and 2 gallons respectively, and finds it necessary to breed numbers of minute creatures and mosquito larvae as live food.
Mr Prout's project has not been all plain sailing. Starting with about twenty goldfish and about twenty rice fish, procured from a South Australian enthusiast, the first year's hatching only yielded half a dozen of the former and about forty of the latter. The second year brought greater success, and at its conclusion, when a bursting barrel deprived the Curator of nearly all his adult stock, he was thus able to begin again with young "fry."
Persistence and constant observation has enabled him to overcome the many obstacles, and quite a large display is the result.
The interesting phase to visitors is the presence of aquatic vegetation and the number of scavenger animals. The water-weeds, which provide such an entrancing contrast to the inhabitants, demonstrate a phase of the interdependence of life. They (the plants) consume the impure elements given off by the fish, etc. and revitalise the water by transforming them into the oxygen, without which the fish would soon become the exhausted gulping specimens so often seen in ordinary jars-shortly to perish.
The scavengers (water snails, fairy shrimps and smaller crustaceans, etc) fulfil their part in disposing of any surplus food and decomposing matter; and in turn, the young of these interesting creatures provide a proportion of live food for the elite occupants of the aquaria, i.e., the gorgeously spectacular fish.
Likewise, the water-snails are very useful, since they scour the vessels, feasting on scum, fungus and algae which would otherwise destroy the clarity of the water. With a well-balanced aquarium it is possible to maintain for years a collection of animals in water that will not necessitate any changing, neither will any feeding be required, all that will be essential is the addition of water to make good the loss from evaporation.
Mr. Prout's activities take him to various swamps and streams in search of new specimens of vegetation, and of animal life which will live in harmony with those already in the aquaria. In introducing new plants, great care must be taken to prevent any fish-enemies from being released in the tanks.
The larvae of the dragon flies are especially destructive, as with their stealth and lightning-like pouncing "masks'" they will assuredly rapidly denuder the vessels of nearly every form of life not too big for gripping and holding. Anything smaller, or even a little larger than the larva, falls an easy prey, and besides consuming the young fish, the invader could inflict great damage and death-causing wounds on the adults.
The larvae of some of the water-beetles are other pests and as a rule, aquarists exclude all the beetle species from their tanks.
The proprietor showed a "Western Mail" representative the midget rice fish, which be claims are very good in coping with the mosquito pest. As their minuteness enables them to penetrate the intense reed-growth in ponds, etc., he advocates, their propagation on a greater scale, with the object of releasing an effective nucleus in the fresh-water swamps of the Perth metropolitan area.
By consuming the "wriggler" in its early larva stage, the benefit to be conferred on a community by these little fish in minimising the mosquito nuisance (with its attendant malaria risk) can-not be over estimated.
This method of using small fish as allies in the fresh-water areas was adopted as recently as 1920, when as outbreak of yellow fever in Peru alarmed the authorities. As it was known that the Island of Barbadoes enjoyed immunity because of the prevalence in its swamps of tiny fish locally known as "millions," whilst the surrounding islands were infested, hundreds of thous-ands of these fish were imported and released in tanks, etc.
Great cost was entailed, but in six months the disease was stamped out and not a single case of the scourge remained on the Pacific coast.
Mr. Prout hopes to interest the health authorities of W.A. in their propagation on a greater scale than he finds possible at present.
Western Mail, 26 January 1928.
REARING FISH AT SUBIACO.
A FRESH WATER AQUARIUM : Fish of many brilliant colours and forms can be seen at an aquarium established at the Subiaco residence of Mr. A. E. Prout. The picture on the left gives a general Idea of the lay-out of the aquarium. The cement tanks in the foreground are for hatching spawn. Later the. growing fish are placed In glass containers. The fish shown are mainly the scarlet and orange Japanese fantails
Further notes concerning Mr. Prout's aquarium appear elsewhere.
