Why the World's Biggest Aquarium Broke 

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The fact not a single camera was pointed towards this million dollar plus aquarium is shocking in its own right.

Wanted to tell everyone I'm ok, I wasn't there when it happened, but still.

The fact that a high-end luxury hotel doesn't have the surveillance cameras in the lobby is incredible!

I’d love to see an interview with some of the fish that survived

The attention to detail and animation of Marin taking candy after surviving the largest free standing aquarium was perfect lol

"Burried under all sorts of delicious debris" Man you know how to frame a disaster and make it a little less grim and a bit of fun.

I'm very glad the injured man took some Lindt chocolate to make his experience a little less traumatic.

They could make a terrarium to replace it instead, just plants and no animals. If any animal were to be included, if possible, are the "cleaning crew" like isopods or springtails, or even certain beetles.

Imagine just chilling on your night shift and then 30 seconds later getting thrown thru a wall lol.

At first, I was confused with how many of your videos I had recommended to me, out of nowhere. With the level of quality you deliver with every video, I have to say it's no surprise. Rapidly becoming some of my favourite content on RU-vid.

It's actually crazy that there was not a single security camera that recorded the event.

This happened in Japan back in 2011, it was caused by an 8.2 earthquake which destroyed a 250000 gallon aquarium at a shopping mall, damaging many of the nearby stores.

Like this comment to honor the poor fishies. 🙏

I stayed at this Hotel about 5 Years ago. Crazy to see, that that thing broke.

"He lands in the chocolate shop next door, buried under all sorts of delicious debris." LOL 🤣🤣🤣

Bro made a video called "Why The World's Biggest Aquarium Broke" only to say 10:48 into it that actually we don't know why

I was around the corner when the aquarium exploded. Helicopters were circling the hotel, and half the downtown area was blocked off. Until today, it's not entirely clear where most of the water drained.

No company in Germany wanted to give a guarantee for such an aquarium, so the companies refused. The US company then built it. But it was clear during the renovation that the acrylic glass would have had to be checked. But they didn't.

How they joined the acrylic panels seamlessly and without a noticeable join is super simple. They use a solvent glue it melts the surface of both pieces allowing the polymer chains to interact and create new bonds the solvent then evaporates. Because the polymer chains were allowed to form bonds and no solvent remains after where the material joint was made the joint area is indistinguishable on a molecular level. Any material that squeezes out can be sanded and polished smooth this is also a very common technique in building plastic scale models where a solvent (Acetone) is used to join the model pieces made from polystyrene.

me: *has a camera pointed at a diy squirrel feeder* them: *no camera for a world record setting attractions worth millions*

The quality of the animation, the construction of the aquarium, its breaking, its subsequent reconstruction from the cracked pieces, everything is top notch!

SpiegelTV from germany did a documentation about the building of this thing. They hired a special company from the USA, because nobody in germany could or wanted to do it. The best scene is where the foreman tells the interviewer: "Nobody in germany has the technology to do this..", and Im just sitting there imagining the typical german architect telling them the idea is lunatics and this thing will blast eventually :D

I was there on Wednesday, December 14th, enjoying cocktails with my coworkers until late at night. We were all completely shocked when we heard the news on Friday morning. Luckily we stayed in a different hotel. We even talked about how it felt so crazy sitting next to such a big aquarium, feeling anxious it could burst. Speculating how thick the glass must be to hold such pressure. But of course we calmed ourselve with „it’s been here for 20 years, it’s not going to spontaneously break right now when we’re here“

imagine wanting to be kind and offer a new acquaintance a chocolate, a Lindt, but he goes into a full PTSD flashback episode Covered in sweat, breathing heavily, he just whispers "delicious debris..." "Sorry, Jorge, i didn't know"

NGL the whole animal welfare part of this all is kinda ridiculous to me. Peta never fails to make me roll my eyes... As a long-time fish owner, and someone who's very interested in tanks... Fish breeding, fish keeping, etcetc is HUGE! A lot of people are into it and these fish tend to live really good lives. What we should be against is the overcrowding of tanks - countless times have I seen competitive stingrays kept in elaborate tanks when they're solitary animals that need the ocean's current to feel safe... For tropical fish, they can lead healthy and happy lives in tanks. Even if it's a smaller tank or something - as long as they have a little over the necessary space per fish they'll be fine. Make sure they're compatible species and kept fed - they'll live good lives. You can't just shut down the entire fish breeding business just because - nor can you release these fish without raising major ecological concerns and effectively killing them since they are dependent on humans. Sure, to most people they're decorations in a tank - but if they're kept healthy what's the problem? They're conscious, yes, but it's not like these fish yearn for the ocean.. They aren't glass pacing, they aren't bored out of their minds, they look good to me.

"no one died" *freeze-frame and slow-mo of all the fish pouring out of the aquarium*

ty for mentioning they managed to save some fish, that was my first worry before i remembered there were like, people under this thing. i'm rly happy they did

Hammer and chisel hypothesis; Did someone put a trigger shrimp in the tank? I know my saltwater aquarium days ended suddenly when my 110 gallon tank blew out and flooded the house. I added a rather pretty shrimp in a week before

I find it both difficult to imagine and amazingly shortsighted that not a single camera was directed at the aquarium. Both for security and streaming to hotel guest rooms or the internet at large.

"It is a miracle how no one died" Meanwhile the fish:

I had been on that aquarium elevator one or two weeks before it exploded, was shocked to see it in the news. I had a friend who lived near Mitte (the neighborhood where the aquarium was), and he told me that the streets surrounding it were closed down due to the flooding and dead fish.

11:30 peta probably shouldnt have been the one to speak up, with all the animal killing it does 😅

Hard to believe I was once there, among with my classmates, riding on that elevator that now is only surrounded by air.

Imagine how deadly it would have been if the lobby was more crowded, the force of the water plus chunks of broken glass could cut someone in half!

Just a minor bugbear from a person in the Aquarium hobby you have referred to Acrylic as acrylic glass, Acrylic is not a type of glass at all. It also isn't glued together so much as the solvent used causes the panels in the zones being joined to fuse together permanently. A well made Acrylic aquarium should pretty much be timeless. What I am questioning is the bonding process they used between the panels because generally speaking when you are doing this you stand the panel up on the surface it is being bonded too, and use sewing needles or another really thin piece of metal shim to hold the panel off the other one and then inject the solvent into the joint and rapidly remove the needles. After the acrylic is allowed to cure to produce a crystal clear seam / finish you use a plumbers torch and gently move it across the seam. What I suspect is that their process to joined the panels took too long and the panels only partially cured due to the size of the panels and you had a whole structure of weak spots. That and the generally thickness of the panels leads me to have further questions. There is a formula that tells you how thick your acrylic or glass panels need to be based upon how tall your structure is. Basically for a tank that is 4' deep (1300mm for metric folks) the panel needs to be around 1.00" or 25mm thick. As your tank gets deeper this thickness goes up. and as the thickness goes up it becomes harder to get proper fusion between panels.

People underestimate how powerful water is all of the time. The fact that enough water rushing fast enough launched a human being through a wall should be testament to that. It's a miracle it didn't happen earlier in the day, no doubt a whole crowd of people would have been crushed, drowned, or suffocated to death against bodies being pushed against them from the rushing water.

I see the problem in the use of huge glass surfaces without support beams in there. If the aquariums are equipped with several support beams in the glass surfaces, so they are smaller and less susceptible to material failure due to the surface area being too large.

ok but I still cannot get over the fact that the man took the chocolate 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 wtf man

“Fortunately, no one died” *slow motion fish being sent to their eternal doom*

You should be aware when an american construction worker says: "They dont have the technology here" Its highly propable that they dont have it too. That reminds me of the Story of autonomous driving Cars. The car industry is trying this for decades. And then one American Company comes from nowhere just to claim they can do it.

I had one of the rooms with a view that day. Just 5 minutes before a friend walked through the lobby! Had the uber been 5 minutes late there could have been a casualty 😬 I had just fallen half asleep again when i heard a massive WOOOOSH, tried to ignore it for a sec, then suddenly realized that only one thing was big enough to make so much noise, Sprinted to the window... Saw the chaos! Made it out through an emergency exit without issues. Drove to work early, on the way saw a puddle of rainwater on the ground and started to violently shiver. Had to tell myself all was good and I'm safe a few times to get that under Control 😅 all good now, but man that was a close one!

So incredibly impressed with the animations on this one! How did you guys make the explosion?

„No one died“ The fish: Are we a joke to you?

Calling the *fire* department for a *water-based* emergency... Great idea!

The idea was fishy to begin with.

Jorge Marin is such a giga chad for sneaking out candy after bursting through a freaking wall💪🤙🏻

I have a reef tank and I'm also a DIY/3D print guy. Maybe I don't do it justice, but I don't like acrylic at all. It scratches easily and most importantly it's incompatible with one of the most common solvents: ethanol (and also other alcohols I think). It won't hurt it right away but once in contact with it, it will form cracks at some point. Maye even months later. That's probably why potential use of the wrong cleaning fluid is mentioned in the video. Glass cleaner often contains alcohols. I bought a kitchen tool that was made from acrylic glass and used it in the reef tank (some sort of stuffing syringe). The second time I wanted to use it, it was cracked. But maybe it's also a thing about the actual quality of the plastic. Acrylic tools, like protein skimmers, or like in this video whole tanks, have been used without problems in the reef keeping hobby.

4:45 ~ First time I heard "Delicious debris" used. 😆

"Buried under all sorts of delicious debris..." What a line.

7:39 - seems like nobody in America has it either 😂😂

It’s so nuts. I was there a few weeks prior, on tour with my band. I’m a photographer and I made a walking pov photography video of Berlin, including this spot. I remember the day it exploded and being sent tons of messages about it. It surely was beautiful to see in person and to capture.

Imagine being a trainee at the reception desk on your first night shift and this happens. "Hey boss sorry to disturb, where can I find the mops?"

I remember riding in the elevator as a child in this big aquarium. and I think by my self "If the aquarium breaks, the fish have no chance and the hotel (it's on the first floor, the elevator surrounds it) will swim away " round 10 years later I saw it in the news. I was shocked! 😢

I am SO glad some of the fish survived ❤🐟

"it is an absolute miracle, that no one died" tropical fish: "Am I a joke to you?"

You deserve more subs and views, you had everything to keep an audence even w/ short attention span locked in; the narrative pacing for its storytelling and visuals.

That's crazy there wasn't a single camera aimed at that thing, security or other.

Cool video, but the fact there was no conclusion to the finding kind of sucks... it did last 20 years though, everything would have a life span. Personally the fact it was dripping, suggests that something is misaligned, be it gaskets or the dome itself. If it's misaligned, unforeseen stresses occur on the material, and over time failure. If I had to guess, the 2nd theory of the 'glass' drying out causing stress is what did it.

Those poor fishies 😢

Ignore Peta

1:41 i guess the 1000 fish were not so lucky 🥲

Love it that you create videos in 18:9 its perfect for watching on the phone. And also soooo nice on an 21:9 monitor :)

This is by far one of the most high quality RU-vid videos I’ve ever seen. The animation? The sounds? The narration… incredible. Thank you for this work of art!!

these videos are truly such a treat. the detail of the lindt chocolates on the floor is seriously one of my favorite things ever. thanks for your hard work :)

My man wasn't leaving this horrific scene without something 😂 Just took a handful of candy lol

I like how you never miss a detail no matter how small it is ;) 5:06

No one has died except for thousands of fish. R. I. P. 🥀💔

I can tell you what caused the failure: *not enough REDUNDANCY.* Sounds like each part of the tank relied on another part for its strength, meaning the compromise of any single part endangers the structural integrity of the entire thing.

it’s a good day when fern uploads

"surprisingly no one died" Fishes: Starts singing, "Don't cry, I'm just a fish~♪"

i love seeing getting notified you post a new video and am always super excited to watch. these just keep getting better i cant wait for your channel to grow even more!

Also, the Germans could not come up with the reason it broke. Maybe they should have asked the Americans who built it and designed it and the company that renovated it to do the investigation.

I'll save you the time. The question in the title is never answered. 10:40 "Ultimately, they can't pinpoint the origin of the crack, all three hypotheses are possible. Unfortunately and unsatisfying, there isn't an definitive answer."

Mal wieder ein hammer Video, mega gute Arbeit!

The timing, no cameras, shift change. This was probably sabatoge to collect insurance due to high upkeep costs.

I used to work for the Radisson Group until 2020 when they were struck by an economic collapse. I was TERRIFIED when I heard about this it in the news! You have no idea how lucky it is that nobody died from this. The story would be radically different if it happened just 10 hours later/earlier...

I was in berlin this day to visit my grandparents i was near the aquadom when it happend i heard a loud bang and this typical glass shattering sound it felt so unreal and it was everything so fast i couldnt react there was like a big wave of watter glass and metall pieces i still not believe what just happened in the moment i thought this is impossible how could it brake I where there so often a couple of hours i found a fish on the street that was living i took it home and put it in my bathtub 😂 yeah i still have it but now i have an aquarium

Wild, I work in the raddison franchise, pretty crazy seeing something like this happening.

A truly alarming incident and unfortunate for the lives of those marine animals. The lack of a definitive cause for the aquarium burst and the ensuing loss certainly brings to light concerns about the design and maintenance of such large-scale structures.

In its place they should build a memorial to honor all the dead fish and other creatures that died during the collapse.

i would also have definitely grabbed a fist full of candy if i were thrown into that candy shop

Pretty sure the tropical fish conspired to escape like in finding nemo 🐠

Dude, just came accross your video and couldnt stop myself from subscribing. AMAZING ANIMATION SKILLS TOOOO (IM WATCHING ALL YOUR VIDEOS RN)

"No Tapping On The Glass" Someone tapped on the glass.

“It is an absolute miracle no one died during this incident” All the fish: 💀

Eine Wasseranimation ist schon ein flexx

Love the quality of your videos - both info-wise and graphics-wise! Thank you for your storytelling!

yet another absolute _banger_ of a video by fern!! as soon as i saw it came up n my recommended i started watching, thanks fern!

I know this is a real-life event, but why am I imagining shattering an aquarium is something that a Batman villain would do?

That's odd, you generally don't "glue" acrylic I don't think, you instead use a special chemical, that "melts" the acrylic together, causing a seamless fusion of the contact spots, I know this because I once made an acrylic EMF shield in an experiment, at one point I even found out I did not get the acrylic panels in the exact dimensions for it to hold water(it was like a flat rectangular pancake of two pieces), so to block the leaks on the sides I got acrylic dust from another panel I cut, I applied the chemical and it all melted to create a seamless acrylic seal. This sort of melting of the edges is how you make aquariums specifically, because it's stronger than any glue bond, sort of like welding them together.

I visited the ddr museum shortly after this happened. Unfortunately they were directly underneath this hotel, so the runoff water damaged a portion of the museum. They were still running dehumidifiers months later.

1:15 the tree just skedaddles out of there 💀

I just feel so sad for the fishies 😢

when I heard of the broken aquarium in the news I was so suprised. also sad how many fish died :( But after this video I know what also happened there which makes it more scary

Amazing video, Love the editing and your storytelling is perfect.

had to roll my eyes at the PETA and NABU lunatics being given any attention whatsoever during this whole ordeal.

I disagree with the killjoys at PETA! At the National Institutes of Health where I worked for 40 years, in the waiting area of the phlebotomy department there is a wonderful salt water aquarium that lends a peaceful easy feeling to patients who are about to have their blood drawn. Young children sometimes have a big issue with having their blood drawn. The beautiful fish in the tank serve to distract their minds from what is about to occur. The tank is maintained weekly by a company named "Tanks for Your Business"

If this would be FISH NEWS, this incident would have a way different perspective 😭😭😭🐡🐠🐟 fishieeesss

I’m so glad you mentioned that efforts were made to save the fish. I feel like if this had happened in the US there’d be no effort to save any of them. As someone who’s had a saltwater aquarium I can tell you that saltwater fish are very intelligent (some of them, anyway). I’m glad some survived, but I’m even more glad that efforts were made to save them. It says a lot about the rescue teams that they’d be willing to spend their time helping thankless lower life forms just for the sake of it. Not to mention those puppies are probably mad expensive.