The Kandawgyi Fresh Water Fish Garden (henceforth just to be called “the Aquarium” for sake of brevity) is in Yangon, on the shore of the inner-city Lake Kandawgyi. The Yangon Zoo is also right next to this lake although the walking time between the zoo entrance and the Aquarium entrance would be over twenty minutes. As far as I can tell, all the zoos in Burma are government-operated – I really doubt there's any scope for private individuals to start even small zoos here – but the Aquarium has the look of a private facility. It probably isn't at all, but that is the impression one gets when visiting. On the tourist map of the city the facility is just labelled as “Aquarium” so I was expecting a building but in fact it is, as the official name suggests, a mix of garden, outside ponds, large outside aquariums and yes also an actual building containing smaller aquariums. It is quite pleasant to stroll around the winding paths with the plantings, the random concrete statues of animals and the mock caves, but it is also quite run-down overall and the outdoors aquariums are difficult to see into due to reflections on the glass making the interior appear to be nothing but inky blackness. The signage is rather better than at the nearby Yangon Zoo but still many tanks were missing labels entirely or only some species in the tanks were named. This will be a rather short review because there's no point going through a tank-by-tank account of the place. The photos which will be in the gallery will give a better idea than a written description I think. Most of the photos are of the tanks and surroundings, not many are of the fish themselves. I initially wasn't going to, but I have included at the bottom of this account a list of the species I saw – do not take this list to be fully accurate because as I said there were various unlabelled tanks and species, and not all species were labelled correctly (although most were). Also of course I may not have identified certain species correctly myself! The ponds in the gardens mainly house tilapias, midas cichlids and carp (goldfish and koi). There are quite a lot of outdoors aquariums, all of which are similar to one another, being quite large and long but horribly difficult to view into, and housing large fish including alligator gar, arapaima, Asian arowana, and large Asian barbs and catfish. There are also a couple of reptile enclosures for saltwater crocodiles and Burmese flap-shelled turtles. There are a couple of mock caves in the garden areas as well, one which I particularly liked for its random factor being designed with stalactites and stalagmites and with awful concrete cobras, bats, monitors, giant centipedes and other animals dotted about inside, some placed in obvious sight and others not-so-obvious. A circular (doughnut-shaped) tank is in another of these fake cave structures – you enter the inside of the doughnut through a low passageway (I had to bend down quite a bit to get in there) and then you can see such species as giant gouramis, oscars, Asian knifefish, Labeo nandina, Labeo calbasu, Ompok bimaculatus, Ompok pabo, and various unlabelled cichlids and small cyprinids. The doughnut was open to the sky above and the tank is quite high off the ground, so the reflections off the glass made photos of the individual fish impossible – much to my annoyance because there were some interesting species in there which I had never seen before. The actual aquarium building is (almost) right at the end of the pathway through the gardens. This is a standard rectangular shape with tanks all along each wall. In the centre of the floor is a blue whale skeleton. The far end of the room has some very poor and badly-in-need-of-renovations reptile terrariums for a small saltwater crocodile (in with a large concrete crocodile!), red-eared sliders, Burmese star tortoises and Burmese yellow tortoises. The fish tanks are fairly small (mostly around three feet long -- imagine a typical home aquarium tank). One housed a large number of Himalayan crocodile salamanders (Tylototriton verrucosus). I had seen one individual of this species on display at the Naypyitaw Zoo but otherwise no other amphibians anywhere. In fact herptiles in general are poorly represented in Burmese zoos (they mostly all house the same few species). There were lots of nice smaller species of fish in the aquarium building, many being native Burmese species and others being standard pet-shop species (yes, the aquarium trade is much the same in Burma as elsewhere!). I was especially taken with the Burmese archerfish Toxotes blythii, the rice-paddy eel Pisodonophis boro (a species of snake-eel from the family Ophichthidae) and a large but completely blind African lungfish (labelled as Protopterus dolloi but I don't know if that is accurate), these three being species I had not seen before. There was also a tank of coolie loaches (Pangio sp.) labelled as “Myanmar loaches” which were entirely pale brown (no stripes) but I don't know which species they would be (Pangio is quite a confusing genus). My camera refused to focus on the coolies or the rice-paddy eels so no worthwhile photos of them, but I did get a couple of usable photos of the beautiful Burmese archerfish.
OUTDOOR PONDS Goldfish Carassius auratus Koi Carp Cyprinus carpio Midas Cichlids Amphilophus citrinellus Tilapia sp. plus some other cyprinids I didn't know (probably same as in some of the tanks) OUTDOOR AQUARIUMS (The common names are those used on the signage) Alligator Gar Atractosteus spatula Arapaima Arapaima gigas Asian Arowana Scleropages formosus Giant River Catfish Sperata (Mystus) seenghala Sheat Fish Wallago attu Rohu Labeo rohita Rohtee Osteobrama (Rohtee) vigorsii Seven-striped Carp Probarbus jullieni Grass Carp Ctenopharyngodon idella Tapian Puntius gonionotus Sabalo Prochilodus lineatus OUTDOOR DOUGHNUT TANK (The common names used here are mine) Asian Knifefish Notopterus notopterus Pabo Catfish Ompok pabo Two-spotted Ompok Ompok bimaculatus Giant Gourami Osphronemus goramy Nandi Labeo Labeo nandina Orange-finned Labeo Labeo calbasu Oscar Astronotus ocellatus various unlabelled cichlids and cyprinids including Midas Cichlids and Giant Danios AQUARIUM BUILDING (The common names used here are a mix of mine and those on signage) Saddled Bichir Polypterus endlicheri African Lungfish (labelled as Protopterus dolloi) Asian Arowana Scleropages formosus Alligator Gar Atractosteus spatula Giant River Catfish Sperata (Mystus) seenghala unknown Synodontis sp. (in a tank labelled as Mystus seenghala) albino Basa Catfish Pangasius bocourti Plecostomus spp. Spiny Eel Macrognathus armatus Pakistani Loach Botia almorhae Clown Loach Chromobotia macracanthus Horse-faced Loach Acantopsis dialuzona Myanmar Coolie Loach Pangio sp. Checker Barb Puntius oligolepis Tiger Barb Puntius tetrazona Scissortail Rasbora trilineata Giant Danio Danio aequipinnatus Red-finned Cigar Shark Leptobarbus hoevenii / L. rubripinna Goldfish Carassius auratus Panda Garra Garra flavatra Swordtail Xiphophorus hellerii Platy Xiphophorus maculatus Guppy Poecilia reticulata Oscar Astronotus ocellatus Convict Cichlid Cichlasoma nigrofasciata (I can't keep up with cichlid taxonomic changes, so Cichlasoma is good enough for me!) Angelfish Pterophyllum scalare Discus Symphysodon aequifasciatus Burmese Archerfish Toxotes blythii Rice-paddy Eel Pisodonophis boro HERPTILES Saltwater Crocodile Crocodylus porosus Burmese Star Tortoise Geochelone platynota Burmese Yellow (Elongated) Tortoise Indotestudo elongata Red-eared Slider Trachemys scripta elegans Burmese Flap-shelled Turtle Lissemys scutata Himalayan Crocodile Salamander Tylototriton verrucosus
