mistressofmuses | The Downtown Aquarium

(I still always want to call it "Ocean Journey", but it hasn't been called that in years.)

Here are the pictures from yesterday!

I love rays. Happy little raviolis.

Some very bright, multi-colored sea stars.

And a tiger. Not a fish, lol, though there've been tigers ever since it opened. They like water, and it's part of the broader "conserve our waters!" theme, I suppose.

The start of the path is about native Colorado species, and then broader North American species.

A snapping turtle! It will wreck your day!

A neat view where you look overhead to see schooling fish.

Cutthroat trout, showing off why they have that name, lol.

There's one bit that I always enjoy, where the theme switches over to deserts and the seasonal water that's available. There's a flash flood demonstration, where they show how quickly it goes from the first rainfall to a truly overwhelming amount of water coming down a canyon. If you stand too close, you will get wet, lol.

These shorebirds look like Men in Black. Or like they're about to tell you that "the boss" wants a word, and you might get disappeared.

Spiny lobster!

Seahorses!

A fish in a clam!

Eels!

It's maybe a bit hard to see, but the purpleish fish toward the middle are basically see-through.

One of Broccoli Cheddar Bomb's relatives??

And a horned frog!

The "rainforest" area is where the tiger is. There are three of them that rotate being on exhibit, and I did not take a picture of the sign that had their names. It was the bigger male who was out while we were there.

Initially he was hanging out on one of the higher perches, taking a nap, though then he woke up and started looking around.

Big yawn. Big teeth.

Then he groomed for a bit.

Majestic.

And then he came down to the water, which was nice! I definitely haven't always gotten a close-up view all that often!

They also have a macaw. (If I recall, the macaw was a "donation" from someone who didn't know what to do with it.)

It seems to enjoy the attention, though. It says hello, and then does tricks, like swinging from its beak. Then it repeats when a new group comes by.

This was really neat: a "mermaid's purse", which I'd heard of, but not ever really seen before. They're the hard cases of shark eggs! This one must be close to hatching. (There was another that was harder to see, but in a much earlier stage of development.)

Pufferfish!

And then there's the really big tank - the one with most of the sharks and big fish species.

The saw nose is definitely impressive looking.

A sea turtle!

I don't know if you can tell from the ripples, but this shark was swimming with a nice, classic fin above water. :)

Unfortunately at this point my phone battery was dying, so I had to get a lot more picky about what I took pictures of, and a lot less picky about how well those pictures turned out. Alas.

A beautiful tank of bright fish.

Lionfish! They're labeled with signs about how they've basically become widespread pests, largely because people get them as pets, and then dump them in the ocean when they don't want to deal with them anymore. So cool looking, but a shame they're basically a globally invasive species at this point.