Aquatics building renovation plan

This renovation will start once como harbor opens next year. There will be 4-6 new fish tanks added (labeled as 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, & 9 on the map) as well as either a renovated sea lion exhibit, or a new fish tank (possibly for rays and/or sharks?) this also features the renovation seal/sea lion “quarantine pool”.

1 - supposed to be Pacific Giant Octopus
2- African Penguin (same as current)
3 - Tufted Puffin (same as current)
4 - Pinniped holding (same as current)
5&6 - supposed to be marine tanks featuring lionfish and moray eel
7+ are later phases of renovation so not sure about plans but mudskippers, garden eels, sharks/rays, and amphibians have been mentioned at various times. Wouldn't be surprised if the coral reef tank is planned to move back at some point as well.

Thanks for the info @Gondwana glad they are getting more of there aquatic species back! It seems that como is trying to make the aquatics building for marine focused, with rays, sharks, lion fish, octopus, moray eel, and more. Mudskippers sound very exciting and another rare species added to comos list. I’m guessing that the rays will be cownose & the sharks will be either dogsharks or bamboo sharks.

Yes, a marine focus should definitely be an improvement over the old freshwater tanks that were not very impressive, especially compared to the freshwater tanks in Tropical Encounters. I have not seen anything published on which shark/ray species might be envisioned but your guess seems logical to me.

@Gondwana What is the history of this building? Have pinnipeds, penguins, and puffins been its main anchor species since it opened? What other species have been exhibited here in the past?

@DavidBrown It was originally built in large part with pinnipeds and polar bears in mind, and I think the other exhibits were pretty much an afterthought.

The main indoor pinniped exhibit (top right quarter of map), secondary pinniped holding for the sea lion show (4), puffin (3), and penguin (2) exhibits are basically the same as they have been since the 1980s, except the puffin exhibit used to also have common murres and the zoo formerly would exhibit alligators in the main indoor pinniped pool during the warm seasons when the pinnipeds were outside. The new outdoor seal/sea lion exhibit is equipped for year-round use, so the indoor pinniped space will be able to be developed for other things in a future phase of renovation.

The top left area (1, A, 13 on map) used to be the underwater viewing window for the adjacent outdoor polar bear exhibit, which was in the modernistic "concrete ice floe" style. The smaller of the two Polar Bear Odyssey exhibits covers the outdoor footprint now and was completed in 2010. After that the indoor area just had a projection screen but as noted above it should be getting an octopus exhibit soon. The area right above this (E) was once a stand where you could buy cut up fish to feed the sea lions.

The central area (covering the entire area between where 5 and 6 are on the map) was a rectangular block of a half dozen freshwater aquaria up until a few months ago. It originally only held Minnesota species (gar, bowfin, bullhead, sunfish, trout, carp, mudpuppy, etc.) and was generally poorly lit and leaky. In the 2000s some of the local fishes were moved out and three tanks were renovated for Tanganyika cichlids, Victoria cichlids, and archerfish/mono/puffer.

In the 2010s a cylindrical coral reef tank with seahorses and a few other small species was added towards the top left area of the map. That tank is currently in the Tropical Encounters exhibit.