Swimmin' With the Fishes

Aren't these colors beautiful? This is what you see as soon as you step inside the Georgia Aquarium in downtown Atlanta. Kali and I were able to visit the aquarium with my sister-in-law and her family.

The Georgia Aquarium is currently the world's largest aquarium with over 8 million gallons of water. It was a pretty amazing place. The first thing I noticed in the above tank was the orange striped fish, but the fish was not the focal point of this tank. Check out the Garden Eels. I'm told they are afraid of people in the wild. If challenged, they will flip over and shoot back down inside their holes to hide. They almost looked like rubber pencils.

Welcome to the jellies room. I didn't make note of specific names of the different types. I was trying to figure out how to get some decent photos in a room lit with black lights, whoa! My nieces shown above are not normally this color :O), thank you Mr. Black Light.

In this picture of Kali, you can get a general idea of the size of the tanks at this aquarium. This one was easily 15' high and spanned the entire length of the room, probably 40'. They were huge and filled with various types of fish.

They also had smaller specialty tanks. This pokey fellow is a zebra turkeyfish. Who knew that was a real fish?

Beautiful pink starfish. It was kind of sparkly.

These anemone were in a touch-tank. You could touch them to see what they felt like. Yeah, I was good without that part.

This was one of the river otters. They were small, like little puppies. Very playful and fast! I took about 20 photos and this was the best one!

The beluga whale has always been my favorite ocean critter. These two were really beautiful to watch! Such graceful swimmers!

I think it might be approaching naptime :O).

Living in Florida, I don't always get excited about seeing an alligator. But, how could I not take his picture when he swam right to me? And, he has such awesome teeth - lol!

This is an Elephant Nose Fish, named for the obvious reason.

Kali took this shot of the piranhas. Pretty cool looking fish.

Then we stepped into the "big fish" rooms. Here you were surrounded by water and fish. You walked, or rode, through a tunnel with fish literally swimming overhead and on both sides. Above is a shot of a huge stingray and a goliath grouper.

Same grouper. He seemed somewhat interested in the people watching him and would swim right up to the cameras. He was probably the fish I enjoyed the most at the Aquarium. Those are yellow-tailed snappers with the yellow tails :O) (duh.)

A 6' sawfish. Just beautiful!

Maybe I missed the connection to "aquarium". This little guy is a gecko, one of four in their new Gecko Display. Not sure what that has to do with the ocean, but it must have some relationship.

One tired little angel. She has a wonderful grammy who got her a stuffed beluga. Grammy likes belugas, too :O).

Yeah, I know this isn't a fish, not even close. But you know I like taking photos of cute little statues and she certainly qualifies for that! I found her in the gift shop. Don't you just love her wreath made of seashells?

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I hope you enjoyed your stroll through the Georgia Aquarium. It was definitely worth the trip.