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What are the best aquarium attractions you have seen?
Memorable creature?
Memorable feature?


Possibly a link in case others are playing tourist in that town....

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~~~ My fish blow kisses at me all day long ~~~

Here are two photos I took at the Melbourne Aquarium Dec 2004. I am not sure what make & model car it was. I contacted them several times to get more info about the set up but I never received a reply. It was pulled down later to make room for special displays.

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Betta 11Gal Desktop & Placidity 5ft Community Tank Photos

Keith

Attached Image:

Car tank Melbourne Aquarium 2004

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Inside the car.

Have a look in [link=My Profile] http://www.fishprofiles.com/forums/member.aspx?id=1935[/link] for my tank info
Look here for my
Betta 11Gal Desktop & Placidity 5ft Community Tank Photos

Keith

Attached Image:

Car tank Melbourne Aquarium 2004

Near enough is not good enough, therefore good enough is not near enough, and only your best will do.
I VOTE DO YOU if not WHY NOT?
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I visited the scripps aquarium in/around San Diego Cali. They had a cool tidepool feature and a pretty dang big local biotope tank. They were also breeding jellies and seahorses at the time.

Tidepool with octopus at feeding time:




Baby seahorse:


BIG reef tank:

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Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

First thing, wish-ga thanks for this thread, I found when trying to get to my pics that my harddrive is dieing and now I'm trying to recover pics I have on it.

Heres some I took when I was in Brazil last summer. This is an aquarium in Santos, its only a short hope to the ocean.

Me outside

penguins



Fish tanks are an expensive addiction

I just got to see (as part of a meeting of a professional society I belong to) the Steinhart Aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences (San Francisco). Wow. It's only been open a few weeks, so there are a few bugs being worked out (some tanks with algae infestations, not that well established yet, technical difficulties, and there're currently very large crowds on weekends), but it's a fantastic aquarium. One of the smaller aquaria (probably about 300 gallons still) caught my eye, with a school of about 40 cherry barbs! As well as dwarf and pearl gouramis, puffers, harlequin rasboras (some of the biggest I've seen!), etc. etc. as a Southeast Asian biotope (I even got to talk to the biologist who set it up). They have a HUGE collection of fish, inverts, etc, as well as some other things that live outside the water. There's a temporary exhibit area that's currently staff choices, and they have a great variety of different exhibits from a tank full of zebra danios, a well-preserved coelocanth, a colony of kribs, a coneshell snail, etc. They have freshwater and saltwater creatures from around the world. Definitely worth seeing! Really modern and green architecture too. The only thing I was disappointed about was the expensive parking! (The visit was free for me, but whatever the ticket price is it'd be worth it - I plan on going with Dad and possibly Mom sometime soon)

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I've been to the new California Academy of Sciences as well, and honestly I must say I liked the old Steinhart Aquarium better. The main thing is the organization... With the old building the aquariums were rectangular and arranged in rows (saltwater on one wall, freshwater on another), so you could be absolutely sure you saw everything and could compare the different types of ecosystems side-by-side.

With the new aquarium, the layout of the tanks in general seems a bit haphazard... There are tanks up high and tanks down low, circular tanks and rectangular tanks, tanks hidden behind walls, etc. I'm not sure I saw everything in there when I went, but I was also distracted by all the children in there screaming because some of the tanks were too high for them to see. A lot of the tanks also looked bare, unestablished, and/or overcrowded.

There was what appeared to be about a 30 gallon tank in one wall with absolutely no furnishings that looked like it had about 50 Zebra Danios in it. The large reef/kelp forest tanks also appeared to be crowded and unestablished (there was nothing growing on the rocks yet so you could easily tell they were fake). When I looked at the mudskipper exhbit upstairs in the lobby, I counted at least four mudskippers that were dead or dying (I couldn't tell if it was environmental deficiencies or stress from all the people walking around).

All that said, though, the Amazon Ecosystem that has the walk-through tube was absolutely stunning... I'm glad they didn't do the sort of cliche walk-through shark/saltwater aquarium thing and put a freshwater habitat instead. The Coelocanth was a lot of fun to see too. Where did all the reptiles go, though? I saw the alligators and the few scattered tanks in the main aquarium area, but that was it. The old Steinhart Aquarium had lots of reptiles. Ditto with the earthquake simulator (that was one of my favorites).

My favorite aquarium is definitely the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which concentrates on marine ecosystems off the coast of California. I've been going there ever since I was a little kid, and I'm going again this weekend (I can take some photos and post them). Here are some from a couple years ago:

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I've been to a few. As for great who knows. I just visit and not rate.

But here's some I've been to (i'm including the zoo aquariums as some are pretty good)

- Scripps in San Diego, CA
- Long Beach Aquarium, CA
- Cleveland Zoo
- Dallas World Aquarium
- Dallas Aquarium
- Fort Worth Zoo
- Denver Zoo
- Denver Aquarium run by some restaraunt chain, previously known as Colorado Ocean journey - it follws the path of two oceans from the originating rivers.
- Boston Zoo
- AQWA - was the aquarium of western australia, aka underwater world. Don't know what it is called now.


Generally i'll visit one or two zoos or aquariums when we visit places. I haven't been to any recently though.

ahhh Denver, I'm sure by Long Beach you mean the Aquarium of the Pacific? Its a great one! I've been on numerous occasions but sdly lack photos. I like the Shark Touch pools, the tide pools, and the Jelly Fish areas... great fun! also the kelp forest area/super tall tank (like 4 stroies) is a great and wonderful tank!

I have yet to go to the Monterrey Bay Aquurium, but I am sure it is splendid.

\\\\\\\"an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure\\\\\\\"

yes, aquarium of the pacific. I've been to too many to keep track of the official names, I generally go by location, unless (like dallas) there's more than one in the area

I know this is different, but my favorite is the chatanooga aquarium. I love its huge freshwater display and the size of the freshwater fish in it. I feel freshwater often gets overlooked, but it is very interesting also.

By the way, go TITANS.

I don't go on many trips. I can tell you this, the oldest and best fresh water aquarium WAS the Belle Isle Aquarium in Detroit. Unfortunately, the city had to close it down for lack of money. They had the largest oldest fresh water turtle and sun fish. I'll really miss that place. My kids loved it too.
The next best is the Detroit Zoo. I've been to the Toledo Zoo but the specimens and setup just don't compare. I would love to see the San Diego Aquarium in California and Bush Gardens' Aquarium in Florida. But alas, the money & time just isn't available.

TTFN --->Ta-Ta-For-Now
Kelly ;o}

I've been to a couple...

National Aquarium in Baltimore
New England Aquarium
Smithsonian National Zoo
Osaka Aquarium
Sunshine Aquarium (Tokyo)
Niagara Aquarium
Ripley's Aquarium, Orlando (SeaWorld)

I've gotta tell you that seeing a whale shark in person is absolutely breathtaking, so the Osaka aquarium was awesome. New England and Ripley's were good too. I go to Baltimore so many times I could give you a tour of the place. Smithsonian I really haven't been to in a long time so I hardly remember what it's like, though.

I'd love to hit the Georgia Aquarium up some time.

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The aquarist is one who must learn the ways of the biologist, the chemist, and the veterinarian.

there is a local fishing/hunting/outdoorsmen store in my area called the Bass Pro Shop. They have beautiful local setups that are fresh and saltwater as well as an amazing tropical set up!

absolutely breathtaking fish!

\\\\\\\"an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure\\\\\\\"

I've been to one of those too! Gander Mountain is another shop that has that setup. Very Pretty.

TTFN --->Ta-Ta-For-Now
Kelly ;o}