$6500 “Labyrinth Aquarium”: awesome, difficult to clean

I’ve always felt bad for fish. Not just in that they’re fish, but that all those in captivity (and many in the wild) just spend all day swimming in circles. Take that great video of the enormous aquarium in Okinawa — there’s a freaking whale shark in there, used to cruising the ocean

; now, even in the second-biggest aqua-enclosure in the world, it’s essentially doing laps. If only they had made a gigantic labyrinth aquarium like this one, the whale shark and its weird-looking friends might actually have somewhere to go.

Its little compartments and passageways are more suited to tetras and goldfish than whale sharks (alas), but it’s still an awfully cool little thing. Technically, the fish would have more places to go in a big cube of the same measurements, but that’s mostly open water, and I think we have all seen how much fish like to lick the sides of their enclosures.

Unfortunately, at $6500 it’s rather a luxury — not that you wouldn’t guess that, since it’s sold at a shop called “Opulent Items.” Add to that the cost of retaining a full time aquarium-scrubber, since the thing would be unbelievably hard to keep clean, and the cost really starts to skyrocket. I guess the question is whether your fish are worth it? I wish mine were.