[Danh]

I was downtown attending a conference in Atlanta this week. Last night they had an "extravaganza" at the aquarium. It was pretty cool to be the only ones there and get free food and alchohol throughout the aquarium. I must say that the ballroom was pretty neat. One either side of the door there is a big viewing window for the belugas and the ocean voyager. The voyager viewing window is higher in the water and it's much easier to get good views of the whale sharks.

I of course went straight to the River scout exhibt. The first tank is the African cichlid tank. I noticed a few much larger fish than I had seen there before. Not that big of a deal.

Next was the longnose gar exhibit. Complete dissapointment. 3/4 of the fish had at least one if not both eyes almost completely white. Some were swollen. Half of the fish ahd torn tails that looked to have been that way for months.

Next you get to the first part of the huge native display. Same thing... The gars, sunfish a bowfin had the same thing.

Next you get to a planted community tank with small fish, angels and discuss. I was suprised the discuss weren't dead...

My biggest dissapointment wasn't from quality though, it was the large SA display that now had alligators. I can drive 15 minutes and see alligators at the zoo!! The rays, pima, aros, plecos were all gone. No fish....

The huge school of RBP's also looked horrible.


Now to the ocean voyager.. This is the multi-million gallon whale shark display. It's was supposedly built to hold 6 full grown whale sharks. As many of you know, they've killed at least two I believe. Apparently they've managed to breed zebra sharks in the exhibit. The pups that they kept are about 4' long now on display. They were able to raise about 19 of them, some of which they gave away. The mom looks to be pregnant again.
The great view of the exhibit from the ballroom let me see a lot of the fish a lot more closely than I had ever been able to see before. I don't do any salt water myself, but I assume they can get hith like a fw fish can... If so, I saw tons of it. Also tons of torn fins that didn't appear to be healing. Cloudy eyes everywhere.
I assume that many of the world's aquariums with HUGE SW exhibits are on the coast and use sea water?? Is that a correct assumption?? I assume that they thought this problem out, but it doesn't seem like they've did it really well.

The south east is in a pretty bad drought, and they are trying to conserve water and all... but it seems like their fish are suffering from it. They do have waterless urinals that supposedly save 40,000 gallons of water a year, per unit. That should be enough to keep their water changes up!!

[sabotage]

Dan, How were the Restrooms though????

[Danh]

Clean.. It's kind of wierd peeing into a bowl connected to the wall with no water going through it though.. lol

[Chubbs]

Would you say it's worth the $ to go though. I've never been and was looking at taking the fam there this summer. I also want to take them to the TN Aquarium. You ever been there?

[Danh]

I answered your PM.

The GA aquarium is great once... but right now has very little of the the FW fish we keep. I'm not going to pay to go again any time in the next two years... unless I can confirm that they put the pbass back out.

From what I remember, since it's been a while, the TN aquarium had a lot more FW fish. I want to go again.