The World’s First Jellyfish Bar Counter Aquarium

Building a Medusarium for Education Purpose

Paris Aquarium (“L’Aquarium de Paris” in French), also called “Cineaqua”, is a public aquarium located next to the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. Different from ordinary aquariums, there are two cinemas inside the building, one offering documentaries of National Geographic, and the other offering cartoon movies. Cineaqua also organizes activities contributing to children education, including fish feeding, puppet show, touch and feel, etc, making it a place other than just being an aquarium.

In 2018, we have the honor to work with their team of jellyfish specialists to install 4 bar counters of Bird’s Eye Aquarium and a big kreisel tank for displaying jellyfish in their medusarium. The 4 bar counters, each of 2 meters wide and 1.2 meters high, form a donut shape with a diameter as large as 5 meters. Surrounding the pillar at the center of the exhibition hall, the kreisel tank is of 3.6 meters wide and 1.8 meters high, making it one of the main tanks in the medusarium.

Working with Jellyfish Specialists and Extending the Enjoyment to Night Time

Jellyfish is a delicate living thing, so the tanks have to be designed and made in a way that the inner surfaces are smooth and without corner. With our product team specialised in aquarium and production team specialised in acrylic, fabricating jellyfish tanks that requires processes like bending acrylic sheets and assembling parts of a complicated structure are not difficult to us. However, water flow is a critical factor keeping the jellies alive. Vertical rotation is a common way, as had in the kreisel tank. But it becomes special when it is rotating horizontally, as had in the case of Bird’s Eye Aquarium. In order to optimize the flow, we tested the tanks with moon jellies in our factory locally, fine-tuning the curved surfaces before the international delivery.

Yet, with too much current, the jellies get stuck to the overflow and torn apart. With too little current, they fall to the bottom and injure the tissue. Setting up the tanks on site with the jellyfish specialists in Cineaqua was a valuable experience for us.

Cineaqua is an aquarium of education and entertainment. In the educational events organized for the youngsters in day time, our bar counters become a table for visitors to learn more about jellies. In the entertainment events organized at set evenings and nights, where visitors can experience the magic of jellyfish with a glass of champagne, our bar counters become a performance stage for the bar tenders to serve drinks. The small cases in between the bar counters are actually the anti-condensation tanks for iced beers!