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60 free Aquariums trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Aquariums are the aquatic zoos and living-room ecosystems that let people watch the sea without getting wet, and this quiz covers them from a Victorian greenhouse in Regent's Park to a Chinese theme park holding nearly 49 million litres. The easy questions ask which naturalist coined the word, which US aquarium is the biggest, what a kelp forest first grew in, and what happened to a hotel lobby in Berlin one December morning in 2022. From there it moves into the history: Jeanne Villepreux-Power's experimental tanks in Sicily, Robert Warington's balanced 13-gallon jar, P. T. Barnum's museum on Broadway, the seawater that reached Chicago by rail, and the sardine cannery that became Monterey Bay Aquarium. The harder end is for people who plan holidays around aquariums: the Kuroshio Sea tank and its 60-centimetre acrylic, Georgia's Honeymooners-named whale sharks, Granddad the 109-year-old lungfish, the aircraft-carrier oceanarium in Lisbon, Peter Chermayeff and Renzo Piano, Kelly Tarlton's sewage-tank tunnel, Moby Doll, and the aquarium that lets visitors touch rays. There is a strand on the home hobby too: kreisel tanks, nano reefs, silicone sealing, the nitrogen cycle and 'new tank syndrome'. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on the institutions and the hobby, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our aquarium fish page covers the species themselves; try our sharks and oceans quizzes next.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which English naturalist coined the word 'aquarium'?
Philip Henry Gosse
He combined the Latin aqua with -arium and used it as the title of his 1854 book.
Q 02In which city did the first public aquarium open, in May 1853?
London
The London Zoo's Fish House was built much like a greenhouse.
Q 03Which showman opened the first American aquarium in 1856 as part of his Broadway museum?
P. T. Barnum
Barnum's American Museum later burned down; Boston's Aquarial Gardens followed in 1859.
Q 04Which chemist showed in 1850 that plants in a container make enough oxygen for animals?
Robert Warington
His experimental 13-gallon jar held goldfish, eelgrass and snails, one of the first stable aquaria.
Q 05Which French marine biologist created the first experimental aquaria in 1832?
Jeanne Villepreux-Power
Working in Sicily, she used them to prove that the argonaut makes its own shell rather than borrowing one.
Q 06Which Chinese emperor set up a porcelain works in 1369 to make goldfish tubs?
Hongwu
Over time the tubs came to approach the shape of the modern fish bowl.
Q 07Which 1851 event helped make cast-iron-framed aquaria popular in Britain?
The Great Exhibition
The British aquarium craze peaked between 1853 and 1860.
Q 08Where was the world's first magazine for the fish-keeping hobby launched, in October 1876?
New York
The first US aquarist society followed in New York City in 1893.
Q 09What powered the first mechanical aquarium air pump, invented around 1908?
Running water
Historians of the hobby regard the arrival of the air pump as a pivotal moment.
Q 10What material finally allowed all-glass, frameless aquariums in the 1960s?
Silicone sealant
Metal frames had made marine tanks almost impossible because of corrosion.
Q 11Which Japanese aquascaper made hobbyists treat home tanks as artistic compositions?
Takashi Amano
His planted 'nature aquarium' style spread worldwide in the late 20th century.
Q 12What delicate animals is a kreisel tank, with its slow circular flow, designed to hold?
Jellyfish
Kreisel is German for spinning top; the design also suits newborn seahorses.
Q 13What is a 'Macquarium'?
A tank in a Macintosh computer shell
Coffee tables, sinks and even toilets have also been turned into tanks.
Q 21Which Home Depot co-founder donated $250 million to build the Georgia Aquarium?
Bernard Marcus
He visited 56 aquariums in 13 countries with his wife before committing the money.
Q 22Georgia Aquarium's whale sharks were named after characters from which TV sitcom?
The Honeymooners
Ralph, Norton, Alice and Trixie were bought from Taiwan's annual fishing quota.
Q 23Which corporation donated the land on which the Georgia Aquarium stands?
Coca-Cola
The site sits just north of Centennial Olympic Park.
Q 14Roughly what does one litre of aquarium water weigh?
1 kilogram
That is why most home aquaria top out around one cubic metre, weighing about a tonne.
Q 15What toxic compound do fish excrete that nitrifying bacteria must convert in a tank?
Ammonia
Bacteria turn it into nitrite, itself highly toxic, and then into far less harmful nitrate.
Q 16What is a freshly set-up aquarium's water-quality trouble, before bacteria establish, called?
New Tank Syndrome
Cures include the fishless cycle, the silent cycle with fast-growing plants, and slow stocking.
Q 17A coral aquarium of under about 40 litres is known by what name?
Nano reef
The very smallest, around 10 litres or less, are sometimes called pico reefs.
Q 18What usually provides the primary biological filtration in a reef aquarium?
Live rock
Aquacultured rock from Florida is now an alternative to rock taken from wild reefs.
Q 19Which theme park in Hengqin, Zhuhai, is the world's largest aquarium by water volume?
Chimelong Ocean Kingdom
It holds 48.75 million litres and opened in 2014.
Q 20Which US city is home to the country's largest aquarium, opened in 2005?
Atlanta
The Georgia Aquarium was the world's largest until 2012 and holds more than 11 million US gallons.
Q 24What was Monterey Bay Aquarium the first to exhibit when it opened in 1984?
A living kelp forest
Its biologists also pioneered the care of jellies, and it was the first to display a great white shark.
Q 25Monterey Bay Aquarium was built on the site of what kind of former factory?
A sardine cannery
The Hovden Cannery closed in 1973 and its revival helped regenerate Cannery Row.
Q 26Which tech co-founder's family funded Monterey Bay Aquarium?
David Packard
His daughters Nancy Burnett and Julie Packard were among the planners; he gave an initial $7 million.
Q 27What sustainable-fish advisory list has Monterey Bay Aquarium published since 1999?
Seafood Watch
The aquarium's research also focuses on sea otters, seabirds and tunas.
Q 28How did Chicago's inland Shedd Aquarium get seawater for its 1930 opening?
Railroad tank cars from Key West
Twenty tank cars made eight round trips to deliver a million gallons.
Q 29How old was Granddad, the Shedd's Australian lungfish, when he died in 2017?
109
He had arrived from Sydney in 1933 for the Century of Progress world's fair.
Q 30John G. Shedd, who gifted Chicago its aquarium, was a protégé of which retail magnate?
Marshall Field
Shedd saw only the architect's first drawings; his widow Mary cut the ribbon in 1930.