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Right before the swap I visited Chicago's public aquarium and an idea came to my mind. I would like to do sort of picture thread of aquariums I visited, starting with Shedd Aquarium. I hope I will be able to go visit Atlantis Marine World soon and take some pics for those who had never been there. I need to hook up with someone who works there to do that photo trip, can anyone help with that? I fell like I need to contact Randy for this one:)
Anyway, Shedd Aquarium is located on the museum campus right in the downtown area of Chicago. It was my second visit to that great aquarium and but first photo oriented.
The city itself is great, one of the nicest, cleanest cities I've ever been too and the downtown area is an architectural masterpiece. I strongly recommend you to visit Chicago when you'll have time, you won't be disappointed. It has Manhattan feel minus the crowd,dirt and smell:)

This is how the aquarium looks from the outside:

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Panorama of the city and Michigan lake from the steps leading to aquarium's entrance

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The Amazon rising exhibition is the main attraction at Shedd Aquarium. There are a couple of nicely aquascaped tanks with piranhas, electric eels, freshwater stingrays and huge schools of various tetras. There is one tank with over a thousand neon tetras, it looks incredible.
One thing worth mentioning: taking pictures in Shedd is not an easy task as most of exhibits are very dark and some of the tanks are sun lit only. And they don't allow flash photography.


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Catfish and freshwater puffers tank


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Stingrays


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But the coolest thing about the Amazon exhibit are beautiful terrariums that hey have there. I always wanted to have one and those in Shedd are a great inspiration.


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Next big thing is a Caribbean reef tank, but there were huge crowd in front of it and the lighting is inadequate to shoot without an external flash unit. Here's two snapshots I managed to grab


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There are few huge tanks featuring fishes and invertebrates from local and around the world waters:


Temperate invertebrate tank


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Knifefish tank


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African cichlids


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Lobster exhibit


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Flowerhorn cichlid




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Spider crab


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And two coolest animals in the whole aquarium IMO. First it's a HUGE blenny from Pacific. The one in the tank is over 2' long.


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And the star of Shedd Aquarium- a red pacific octopus. I couldn't get any better picture of him because of the annoying light of the exhibit behind me. Anyway, this creature is so fascinating to watch I spend over half an hour starring at the tank. Look how many toys he has in the tank!


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A shallow pool exhibition


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Otters and penguins area. There were no otters when I was there though, I guess they were all sleeping:)


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Shark tank is the biggest aquarium, but it's so dark it's missing the point IMO. There are some HUGE fish in there, Tiger sharks and sawfish and many others


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Shedd aquarium has a big reef section too so reefers won't be dissapointed.


Morray eels pics


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Seahorses exhibits


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The reef tanks of Sheed aquarium


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Fish of the reef tanks


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Corals and anemones


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Coral propagation area


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Highly overpriced gift shop:)


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I hope you liked this photo journey. I highly recommend you visiting Chicago and Shedd Aquarium if you're gonna be around. Next mission ATLANTIS:)


Oh, one last pic.Taken on the rest area on I-80. No comments:)


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bad coffee

Inept at life.
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Sweet pics. resized, some could become pic of the week!

I'd live in Chicago in a NY-minute if it wasn't so cold there. 2' of snow and -10? No thanks.

I was at Baltimore about 8 years ago, and wasn't impressed. Maybe they've put some money into it and it's gotten better.

Public aquariums I recommend:
Georgia. Duh. Just go. While you're in Atlanta go to the Vortex for a burger.
Boston (New England Aq.) Great aquarium.
Dallas. Yeah, Texas. Really big aquarium. (Isn't everything bigger in Texas?)
Monterey Bay Aquarium in Cali. Beautiful.
Birch aquarium in San Diego. By far the best reef tanks I've ever seen in an aquarium. The whole trip through might take you an hour. That may be wrong if you sit and watch one of the really nice display tanks.

Cheers,
B
 

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