Bonita Springs Aquarium and Bird Park

The design part comes soon. Still working on a "walk-through" of it. Unfortunately, I cannot make a map to save my life so a walk-through will be all that happens. I could try a map but it might not work.

 

Me too, but I don't know if this is in Australia.

 

Bonita Springs Aquarium and Bird Park

Location: Bonita Springs, Florida
Admission: Adults get in for $30. Seniors 60 and over get in for $28. Children get in for $25. Veterans and active military get in for $20 (support our troops people). Infants 2 and under are free to enter.
Other amenities: Not yet completed, however $150 per year gets you into the park as many times as you want, and discounts on the other amenities. $350 gets you a dive in the main shark tank, and $300 will get you that if you are a member.
Off-property shows: The Animal Ambassadors section is not open to the public, and the animals are used for shows both on and off of the property. The cost of shows is $20 per animal per hour.

When you pull into the parking lot, you can immediately see the entrance building with the large sign that says "Bonita Springs Aquarium and Bird Park". The sign is blue text with a white outline, and there is the silhouette of a manatee and a pelican on the sign. Once you get out of your car, you walk up to the building, buy your tickets (or show your membership card), and officially walk into the park. Once you walk into the park, attached to the entrance building (technically outdoors, but still covered) is a small collection of reptiles and amphibians. These would be the ones covered in the "Random Exhibits" post.

Once you have seen all of the reptiles and amphibians off the back of the building (should take around 15 minutes, there are 6 enclosures with 15 species in them), you will walk down a laminated tile path - this will be the path you follow all the way until the final stop, the aquarium building. When aerially viewed (from a low-flying plane or helicopter), the path looks like (due to the tiles), a large, winding snake - the tail end is at the entrance building, and the head is at the entrance to the aquarium. Anyways, you follow the path for just a tiny bit and you can see a pond with wooden railing around it - this houses the storks and swans, along with koi. Just a quick stop here, maybe 5 minutes or so.

So you will keep following the path, and you pass through an area heavily planted with bamboo and ferns. After a short walk, a minute or two tops, you will see two enclosures. Both will meet or exceed AZA standards. One will house the melanistic leopards, and the other will house the tigers. A leucistic bengal tiger will be one of the tigers, and the other tiger will hopefully be an Indochinese or a South China tiger - Malayan or Bengal is the more realistic option. This stop should take around 10 minutes or so. Each enclosure will be around 3,500 square feet.

As you continue along the path, you will next see the large bird collection. The collection starts with the Australian and Indonesian walk-through aviaries. After walking through these, the turtle/lungfish/rainbowfish/cockatoo exhibit can be viewed in a sheltered area, along with the smaller South American aviary. Afterwards, the birds of prey (and crows) can be seen in large mesh aviaries. After this comes the large row of wooden and wire avaries, housing mostly larger parrots like the cockatoos and macaws, along with amazon parrots, toucans, hornbills, and a few other parrots. The model for this is the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.

After this is the complex of three African exhibits. The first is viewing for the large waterbird/savanna watering hole. The actual watering feature will have two islands in the middle for birds to rest on, and there will be a sandy beach accessible to the birds. Viewing here will be from a pier-like structure that, at the farthest point, goes about 8 feet into the enclosure. On the other side of the pier is a moderately-sized savanna for the land-oriented birds and the hoofstock. Viewing from a railed fence will be available to see the land birds and hoofstock over here. After this is seen, guests will walk over to the large African Savanna Hut, which will be themed like a Safari Lodge type building. Here, visitors will be able to view all of our reptiles, amphibians, small mammals, and fish hailing from Africa. At the end, there is a large exhibit that is technically outdoors with underwater viewing for nile crocodiles. After this, guests finish the bird collection (and African collection) off with a walk-through tropical African aviary, focusing on mainly the great blue turacos - other species live in here as well though, don't worry.

The next area is the figure-8 shaped Everglades complex. The left side of the building (the round side) has all sorts of exhibits with native Everglades species, the largest enclosure being a large one for american alligators, and a separate one for american crocodiles. Then in the middle, you've got a huge viewing panel along the back wall that gives you a view into the manatee lagoon, with half below the water and half above - this allows you to see the fish, turtles, and manatees along with all of the many bird species. On the right side, there are many exhibits featuring invasive species, the largest being one for wild boars and invasive songbirds. After you exit the building, the path splits off a bit and you can take a detour - either one you take leads you to the next exhibit (seabirds and turtles). If you take the detour, you get to walk on a wooden bridge through the large manatee lagoon. It's technically a walk-through aviary, since all of the birds are free-flying inside of here.

The final exhibit before the aquarium is the sea turtle and seabird lagoon. This is a singular exhibit, with Florida Keys native seabirds on the large beach (complete with plants like palm trees and grasses), a shallow section for the birds to run around in, plus for the turtles to haul out in, and a deep reef drop-off for the turtles to swim in along with Keys fish species. Viewing is available all around the exhibit.

Technically, the final exhibit before the aquarium was not the turtles and birds - it is the Animal Ambassadors section. However, this is not open to the public and won't really be discussed any further.

Alright, onto the aquarium. The first part is Florida's native tanks. These include the jellyfish, the mangrove tank, the stingray lagoon tank (with southern, atlantic, mojarras, needlefish, bonefish, and ladyfish), the menhaden tank, the beach tank, the salt marsh tank, and the reef octopus tank. Also somewhere on this level is the large stingray exhibit, also housing a few fish including zebra and blacktip reef sharks. The tank here is viewed through the acrylic windows. More on this in a bit. The tropical shark and ray touch tank is also down here. After you have viewed all of these tanks, you walk through the large shark tank, and then get off onto an escalator. This takes you to the upper level, which is the non-Florida species. These tanks are all of the reef tanks (real and artificial), the whitetip reef shark tank, the clownfish/anemone tank, the giant pacific octopus, the seahorse tank, the seadragon tank, the coldwater shark touch tank, the sally lightfoot crab tank, the cuttlefish tank, the scorpionfish tank, and the sea snake tank. After this you take another escalator down, and you see the large shark tank through a massive viewing window, as well as the freshwater tanks. The freshwater tanks are the amazon stingray tank, the piranha tank, the electric eel tank, the payara tank, the amazon flooded forest tank, the asian arowana tank, and the Mekong river tank.

Unfortunately, we are now finished with the entire park. There is a pathway out of the park, and pathway to the entrance building to do it all over again if you'd like. Hope you enjoyed.

 

If you want to have a "wow" ending, a good idea would be to have all kinds of colorful tropical jellies. They are one of the animals that most aquarium visitors will stop and look at for a while.

 

There are moon jellies and atlantic sea nettles in the Florida section right now, how's about adding spotted jellyfish and upside-down jellyfish to this mix?

 

I was thinking something a little more extravagant. While doing that and keeping to native species is fine, I think it would be more interesting to see jellies from around the globe (could make for an interesting educational opportunity). Colorful species like flower hat jellies and black sea nettles really leave an impression. Well, I can't be sure with the flower hats (I always seem to visit a place just before or after they are exhibited...) but I would assume the colors would draw attention. Those are just my thoughts, though- don't change anything unless you agree. Every member would design a different aquarium/park.

 

I love the idea, just couldn't seem to find many good species that seem to be exhibited. I found some (including flower-hats and black sea nettles), and added them to the update post. The total jellyfish exhibit is at the end of the aquarium and has 20 species in it, including 5 species of sea nettle and Lion's Mane Jellyfish.

 

Jelly husbandry is still in the works, in many cases. We are still learning how to care for crown jellies, immortal jellies, and many other species, but the progress we are making is good.

 

Can different species of jellies live together? Including Lion's manes with smaller species like Moon jellies. Or highly venomous species like the Sea wasp.

 

Not generally. A lot of jellies tend to eat other jellies. Lion's manes will eat moon and other small species. Very similar species will do ok together, such as fire and ice jellies.

 

Hm... Thanks.

 

Yeah, I don't plan on housing any of the jellyfish species together. There will simply be cylindrical-shaped tanks housing nothing but the jellyfish in them.

 

One thing I want to do is work on our large aviaries. The gray-headed kingfisher is a bird I would like to be in the African walk-through collection, making for 3 kingfisher species in this exhibit and 4 in the whole park. African pygmy goose and masked weaver can also be found in this aviary now.

But the main thing that I want to do is add other non-bird animals to our larger aviaries. Tortoises make a great candidate, as do smaller mammals such as the dwarf antelope species. African spur-thighed tortoise will live in the large savannah/watering hole with the birds and a few hoofstock specimens. Speaking of this exhibit, I've decided to elaborate on the savanna aspect of it and include bontebok, gemsbok, red haartebeest, reticulated giraffe, helmeted guineafowl, and ostrich. Zebra duiker will be attempted to be obtained for the tropical walk-through African aviary. However I don't know of these being held in captivity, then black duiker is the preferred species. If possible, they will both live in the exhibit (along with the resident bongos), plus leopard tortoises and radiated tortoises. Okapi are the ultimate goal in this unique experience. A wall tank housing fire skink will be added to the Safari Lodge as well as cape genet. In case you couldn't tell, I'm really trying to define the African selection at the zoo

In the south american aviary (not walk-through, housing a few "songbird" species and a few waterfowl and conures), there will be red footed tortoise and yellow footed tortoise. In our Australian aviary, it will be difficult to add any kind of tortoises considering there are none native to to Australia. There is the potential that a small mammal species that is mostly terrestrial like some sort of wallaby could be added, and the ultimate goal is to keep matschie's tree kangaroo. The indonesian aviary would have a pond that houses painted terrapins, and the tortoise species would be forsten's tortoise and burmese black mountain tortoise. Java sparrow can be found in this aviary now as well. Spectacled owl and barn owl can be found in the birds of prey section.

Don't think I won't do a bit more with birds either. Star finches in the Australian aviary, plus blue throated macaw and St. Vincent amazon parrot in the parrot walk area. Don't forget the purple grenadier finch, speckled pigeon, and red cheeked cordon bleu finch in the African aviary as well.

I've been thinking about it and thinking about it, and I think it's fair enough to say that a large penguin exhibit would be very popular at the park. It would house no species other than African penguin.

 

There are currently no zebra duiker in captivity, unless they are in rehab centers across their native range. I don't know how hard they are to obtain, but you'd have to import from the wild. I'm not really sure what caused this species to be phased out in the 1980s(?) but I would be very happy if I got to see one. Black duiker is spreading slowly though America. Hartebeest, you'd most likely have to import (unless there are some lurking around in the private sector), but I can't see that brig a problem.

 

Is this facility the former Bonita Springs Wonder Garden owned by the Piper Brothers now renovated and expanded under new ownership. Another interesting facility is Homosassa Springs State Wildlife Park which displays only Florida species with the addition of Caribbean flamingos and one hippo. This facility was formerly owned by Ivan Tors of the Flipper and Gentle Ben tv series.

 

I thought I saw something about Los Angeles Zoo having someone, they had breeding success I believe, however they may no longer have them. Either way, it would be an impressive species to keep in captivity. They are IUCN listed as vulnerable, so they might be a bit difficult to import, not sure though because pretty much nobody has ever done it.
I would imagine hartebeest are kept on some of the Texas African game ranches, those people are insanely rich and always try to get a new species on their property.

 

This has nothing to do with any existing park (none that exists or has ever exists). The species lists were from zoos I have been to before where I liked some of the (mostly) birds there, so that's where those come from. Most of this is 100% original though.

 

For anyone interested, here's a quick one-glance animals list:

Mammals: 40 species

Ungulates: 14 species (added black rhinoceros)
Primates: 5 species
Cetaceans/Pinnipeds: 1 species
Large Carnivores: 3 species
Small Carnivores: 7 species
Rodents, Marsupials, Bats, and Others: 10 species

Birds: 147 species

Birds of Prey: 13 species
Parrots: 41 species
Seabirds: 9 species
Freshwater Waterbirds: 38 species
Toucans and Hornbills: 8 species
Other Birds: 38 species

Fish: 260 species (safer to say about 230 species, some were repeats)

Sharks: 22 species
Other Elasmobranchs: 18 species
Saltwater Fish: 146 species (actually less, many were repeats - safe to say about 120 species)
Freshwater Fish (excluding rays): 76 species (actually less, some were repeats - safe to say about 70 species; added two species of tilapia to the savannah exhibit)

Invertebrates: 51 species

Terrestrial Arthropods: 6 species
Aquatic Invertebrates (excluding corals): 45 species

Reptiles: 80 species

Lizards: 20 species
Turtles and Tortoises: 29 species (added helmeted turtle to the savannah)
Crocodilians: 4 species
Snakes: 28 species

Amphibians: 11 species

Frogs and Toads: 9 species
Salamanders, Newts, and Caecilians: 2 species

Total Species: 589 (less once you factor in the repeats for some of the fish, but likely more when you factor in the corals (none of which were accounted for)

 

Why not Asian forest tortoises and Forstens's tortoises in the Indonesian vivarium.

 

Good idea, I'll edit that in real fast