My recent family vacation was to Miami, Florida. As with every family vacation, I added as many aquatic destinations to the itinerary as I could. The Phillip & Patricia Frost Museum of Science has been a place I have wanted to visit, especially because my fellow Reefs.com contributor, Richard Back, helped with some of the displays there. I wanted to see it in person after watching his videos.

The Frost Science Museum located at the Maurice A. Ferré Park in the downtown area was opened in 2017. The facility has 6 floors and an impressive aquarium section. The three-story, cone-shaped, 500,000-US-gallon (1,900,000 L) Aquarium is open to the top level and also includes a 31-foot (9.4 m) diameter oculus lens at the bottom for viewing the fish, rays, and sharks.

We were able to meet some of the crew that maintained the aquatic exhibits. The facility is one of the newest and most modern in the United States. All in all, it is a fantastic place to bring the family. Exhibits get refreshed in a timely cadence so it is essentially a new experience every few years. I believe a key aspect in its success is that this aquarium gets all of its saltwater directly from the ocean – it would be a crazy amount of salt to procure for the amount of water changes they perform on the aquariums they have from the smallest to the largest. While talking with one of the employees, I learned that the hardest system to maintain stability in was their smallest aquarium, which was no different from our experiences on the hobbyist side.

If you are in the downtown Miami area, I highly recommend stopping by the Phillip and Patricia Frost Science Museum and spending a few hours to take it all in.