Moscow aquarium

Finally Moscow has its own full scale Aquarium built using the best world standards that you can visit with your family during a weekend. It is called "Moskvarium" and it is supposed to be one of the largest in the world. It was opened at the premises of VDNKH All-Russian Exhibition Center as part of the newly built Center of Oceanography and Sea Biology on the 5th of August. The official opening ceremony of "Moskvarium" took place one day before and was attended by president Putin as well as mayor of Moscow Sergey Sobyanin.

Moscow Aquarium displays over 8,000 animals inhabited in 80 tanks that hold 3,000,000 liters (790,000 gallons) of sea water located on the 53 thousand square meter plot of land. "Moskvarium" is pretty big but it still looks small comparing to Georgia Aquarium that holds 23,800,000 liters (6,300,000 gallons) of sea water and considered to be the largest one in the world at the present moment. Just so you get a better picture, there is also Dubai Mall Aquarium with almost 10,000,000 liters (2,640,000 gallons) of water and Aquarium of Western Australia that holds about 3,000,000 liters (790,000 gallons) of sea water. In addition to the aquariums, Moscow Oceanarium has a touch pool where you can get hands-on with sea stars, carps and stingrays as well as the sea theater that will hold regular shows and can seat up to 2,000 guests. (Dubai Mall Aquarium: ) During first days after opening Moscow Aquarium was literally flooded by people coming from all over the country. As reported by a number of social network users it could take up to 3 hours to pass through the line of almost 2000 people standing under the open sun in 32 degree heat in order to get in. In addition to that there were some problems with the e-ticket machines as well as queue organization issues.

There seem to be no operation problems at Moscow Aquarium today, but it still can get crowded during public holidays and weekends.