Many of the pools in this list are spectacular because of their location or view, but the pool at the Golden Nugget Hotel in Las Vegas has a shark aquarium in the middle of it! The salt-water aquarium is separated from the swimming area, but only by glass -and they even have a water slide running through the shark enclosure! Link -via the Presurfer

This classy, if a tad expensive ($4,500!) sink doesn’t come with fish, but it does offer a habitat for them. There’s a light in the back as well as access ports on the top. The producer recommends that you get a professional plumber to install it.

Link -via My Modern Met

After mating, a female produces as many as 40 fertilized embryos, separated between two separate wombs. The embryos take nearly a year to fully develop, but they begin hunting long before that. After about two months, their own yolk sacs go dry. Hungry, they start eating their brothers and sisters. After the rampant in utero cannibalization, only one shark — the biggest and strongest — is left in each womb.

At birth they’re three feet long and experienced hunters, with a good chance of survival. But the tiny brood size, nearly year-long gestation period, and relatively restricted maternal capacity — after giving birth, mothers must wait a year to reproduce again — limit the number of young sharks.

Read more about this research in artificial shark gestation at Wired Science. Link

(Image credit: Port Stephens Fisheries Institute)

(YouTube Link)

Whether or not this whale is enjoying the show is up for debate, but one thing is certain-his eyes are locked on the mariachis as they play. Maybe it’s their shiny suits or instruments that have caught the whales attention, or maybe he’s just wishing he could grab all three men and drown them in his tank! -via BoingBoing

An otter at Sea World in San Diego has fun with an energetic toddler. Which is what otters really are underneath that fur! -via Buzzfeed

Palytoxin is shrouded in legend. Hawaiian islanders tell of a cursed village in Maui, whose members defied a shark god that had been eating their fellow villagers. They dismembered and burned the god, before scattering his ashes in a tide pool near the town of Hana. Shortly after, a mysterious type of seaweed started growing in the pool. It became known as “limu-make-o-Hana” (deadly seaweed of Hana). If smeared on a spear’s point, it could instantly kill its victims.

The shark god may have been an elaborate fiction, but in 1961, Philip Helfrich and John Shupe actually found the legendary pool. Within it, they discovered a new species of zoanthid called Palythoa toxica. The limu-make-o-Hana was real, but it wasn’t seaweed – it was a type of colonial anemone. In 1971, Richard Moore and Paul Scheuer isolated the chemical responsible for the zoanthid’s lethal powers  – palytoxin. Now, Jonathan Deeds from the US Food and Drug Administration has found that the poison is readily available in aquarium stores.

The problem is that the anemones that contain palytoxin are almost impossible to distinguish from species that don’t. Read more about it at Not Exactly Rocket Science. Link -via reddit

Three of the walls of the tank are the foundation walls of the house and a large section of floor was removed by the bay window to allow access. Downstairs a wall of glass has replaced the brick wall, and behind it are some of the largest fish kept in captivity.

And the collection in the tank – which includes some valuable species – consists of two chainsaw doradids, three 2ft long Pacus, some Pangasius, a Red tail hybrid catfish, two alligator gars, eight enormous stingrays and two Fly River turtles.

They will soon be joined by two silver arowanas, which are more commonly found in the Amazon River Basin.

You can view several large pictures of the aquarium at the link.

Link via OhGizmo! | Photo: Page One

Previously: Arapaimag’s Monster Home Aquarium

Anatoly Konenko, a Russian artist who specializes in miniatures, holds a Guinness World Record for having built the smallest aquarium in the world. It’s 30 mm wide and holds 10 ml:

The water has to be applied using a syringe so as not to disturb the landscape the Siberia-artist lovingly created.

Konenko, who calls his art ‘micro-miniatures’, even made a minuscule fishing net which he used to place the fish, baby Danios.

The adults are usually a favourite with more normal sized tanks but the tiny fish look at home in Konenko’s construction for which he has since added a specially built air pump.

You can view several large photos and a video at the link.

Link via Make | Artist’s Website

An underwater wedding ceremony yesterday at the London Aquarium drew the attention of a turtle who came forward to object to the union of this man and this woman. Or maybe he just objected to the the couple trespassing in his territory. Or possibly he just wanted a bite of that delicious wedding dress! -via Buzzfeed

The world’s largest aquarium is the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, which holds eight million gallons of water, with 6.3 million gallons in one exhibit alone! If this video is any indication, it may also be the prettiest. The song is “The Ballad of Winslow Homer” by The Dimes. Videography by Stillmotion. Link -via The Daily What

April Pignataro and Michael Curry of New York City got married yesterday. The bride wore a white wetsuit and the groom wore a traditional black wetsuit as they climbed inside a 120,000 gallon shark tank to take their vows at Atlantis Marine World in Riverhead, N.Y. Both are experienced divers, and said their “I dos” over a radio transmitter with an officiant who did not get in the tank.

“My mom was against it,” Pignataro said. “She was concerned that my makeup and hair were going to get messed up in the water. But . . . I’m a tomboy. Hair and makeup don’t mean a whole lot to me.”

Link -via The Huffington Post

Nike78 is an project by designer Paul Jenkins and the Nike apparel company which invited artists to modify shoes in creative ways. The Wieden+Kennedy advertising agency in Tokyo turned one of their shoes into an aquarium.

Link via Super Punch | Project Page | Photo: W+K Tokyo Lab

Now the Yarmouth turtle tank -12 feet in depth and width holding 250,000 litres of water along with George the 3ft long green turtle – has been partially emptied for the festive season.

Thousands of litres have been removed to lower the water by a six inches and keep the sensitive alarms clear.

Displays Supervisor Christine Pitcher said: ”Last time an aquariist had to dash to the centre in the middle of the night, so we’re not going to take any chances.

”Sprouts are really healthy for green turtles.

”The high levels of calcium in them are great for their shells, the fibre is good for their digestion and they also contain lots of beneficial Vitamin C, sulphur and potassium.”

Link -via the Presurfer

(image credit: Flickr user pkingDesign)

The young sharks have been taken to a “nursery” tank with some baby eagle rays, where visitors can see them before they are released into the wild.

Link (Photo: Richard Robinson)

Update (11/11/2009): The mother and her eight babies are all doing fine.  Link to Daily Mail story with video.

In 1940, Hitler, incensed by the successful bombing of Berlin by the RAF. ordered the construction of three enormous flak towers to protect the city. Soon afterwards, this idea quickly spread around Germany. 

Considered invulnerable at the time – and they pretty much were – many of these colossal structures still stand today, albeit serving much more "civilian" purposes:

The L Tower in Vienna is now, well, you take a guess. If your German is any good then its current name – Haus des Meeres is a complete giveaway. If not, then you may be surprised to discover that it is an aquarium. Instead of weapons of war and people huddling from falling bombs it now houses over three and a half thousand animals, with huge fish tanks containing sharks, turtles and piranhas (in different tanks one assumes). There is even a new tropical house with free flying birds and free-running monkeys.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.

It’s a good thing that I’ve completely given up on aquariums (mine was cheekily named "The Last Stop Before Fish Heaven"), because this one by ZeroEdge is absolutely gorgeous. With its overflowing water, it’s what you get when you cross an infinity edge pool with an aquarium … Link

This awesome tank is found at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Japan.

The main tank called the ‘Kuroshio Sea’ holds 7,500-cubic meters (1,981,290 gallons) of water and features the world’s second largest acrylic glass panel, measuring 8.2 meters by 22.5 meters with a thickness of 60centimeters. Whale sharks and manta rays are kept amongst many other fish species in the main tank.

The music is "Please don’t go" by Barcelona.

– via jonrawlinson

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by jonrawlinson.

If getting to the market is just too much of a bother to you, plus when you get there most of the food are from the other side of the world then there may be a locavore stirring within you.  Locavores are people who only wish to eat food from their own locality (loca, vore, get it?). It is becoming quite a movement.

If you want to bring forth your hidden locavore (and happen to have  quite a healthy bank balance) then the ultimate food source can be situated in your own house.  Design, environmentalism and aquaponics come together in Local River by artist Mathieu Lehanneur to ensure you will never have to go far for that fish and chips supper again.

From Mathieu’s website [Flash]:

The plants extract nutrients from the nitrate-rich dejecta of the fish. In doing so they act as a natural filter that purifies the water and maintains a vital balance for the eco-system in which the fish live. The same technique is used on large-scale pioneer aquaponics/fish-farms, which raise tilapia (a food fish from the Far East) and lettuce planted in trays floating on the surface of the ponds.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.

“It really does look like something out of a horror movie! It’s over four feet long with these bizarre-looking jaws. Having done some research we also discovered that it is covered with thousands of bristles which are capable of inflicting a sting resulting in permanent numbness’.”

Matt believes it probably arrived as a juvenile in a delivery of living rock from another aquarium.

After being carefully removed the worm – which has been nicknamed ‘Barry’ by staff – has been re-located into its own tank, safely away from the coral.

Link -via Arbroath

Octopus have been famous for their curiosity and intelligence.  One California aquarium recently experienced flooding.  The culprit?  A female two-spotted octopus!

Staff at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium in California say the trickster who flooded their offices with sea water was armed. Eight-armed, to be exact.

They blame the soaking they discovered Tuesday morning on the aquarium’s resident two-spotted octopus, a tiny female known for being curious and gregarious with visitors. The octopus apparently tugged on a valve and that allowed hundreds of gallons of water to overflow its tank.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.

“Yesterday morning at around 9:30 AM, prior to the resort’s waterscape opening to guests, a 12+-year-old female reef shark jumped over an 18 inch wide and 1 foot high sustaining structure into the resort’s Leap of Faith water slide.

The Atlantis Aquarists believe the shark was startled by an unusual circumstance that we have no way of defining completely. In the over ten years guests have experienced the Leap of Faith, the reef shark itself, harmless to humans as it is fed regularly by our staff, had shown no previous incidences of leaping out of the water in the marine habitat …

The aquarium staff immediately retrieved the shark from the pool, but the chlorinated water had already poisoned the fish. She died shortly after. Link -via Simply Left Behind