Chengdu sits about as far from the ocean as a major Chinese city can, more than 1,500 kilometers from the nearest coast. That did not stop it from building the Cube Oceanarium, an 11-million-liter aquarium that briefly owned one of the aquarium world’s most coveted bragging rights: the largest acrylic viewing panel on Earth. It ranks 18th on our list of the largest aquariums in the world.
Key Stats
| Total water volume | About 11 million liters |
| Largest tank | About 10 million liters |
| Opened | 2015 |
| Location | Chengdu, Sichuan, China |
| Record | Guinness World Record, largest acrylic panel: 39.965 m × 8.3 m (verified December 31, 2014) |
The Record-Setting Window
The Cube’s claim to fame is its main viewing wall. Guinness World Records certified it on December 31, 2014 as the largest acrylic panel in the world, an aquarium window measuring 39.965 meters long by 8.3 meters high (131 ft by 27 ft), unveiled ahead of the aquarium’s 2015 opening. Standing in front of it feels less like looking into a tank and more like facing a cinema screen the length of four buses, with nearly all of the facility’s water on the other side of it.
The record kicked off a very Chinese arms race. Within a year, Guangzhou’s Grandview Aquarium took the title with a 40.8 by 8.2 meter panel, and in 2018 a whale-shark window in Zhangzhou, Fujian raised the bar again at 389 square meters. The Cube’s window remains one of the largest ever made.
China’s Mega-Aquarium Boom
The Cube Oceanarium arrived in the middle of a decade in which China built giant aquariums faster than anywhere else on Earth. Chimelong Ocean Kingdom in Zhuhai opened in 2014 with nearly 49 million liters, still the world record holder, and mall developers from Guangzhou to Shanghai raced to anchor retail projects with record-chasing tanks. The Cube’s roughly 10-million-liter main tank puts it among the biggest single aquarium tanks in China, in a landlocked megacity of 20 million people better known for pandas and hotpot.
Visiting
The Cube Oceanarium is a family attraction first and foremost: alongside the great window, it offers the standard mega-aquarium repertoire of tunnel walkthroughs, touch pools and feeding shows. For travelers, it pairs easily with Chengdu’s headline attraction, the giant panda research base, for a day of very large animals behind very large windows.
FAQ
What record does the Cube Oceanarium hold?
Guinness World Records verified its main aquarium window, 39.965 m long and 8.3 m high, as the world’s largest acrylic panel on December 31, 2014. Larger panels have since been built in Guangzhou and Zhangzhou, but the Cube’s remains one of the biggest ever installed.
How big is the Cube Oceanarium?
Its tanks hold about 11 million liters in total, with the main tank accounting for roughly 10 million liters. That places it 18th among the largest aquariums in the world.
Where is the Cube Oceanarium?
In Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in southwestern China, one of the largest inland cities in the world.