[fwungy]

The issue was caused by the forced reduction in heating due to energy sanctions. The decreased warmth of the lobby caused the aquarium, which was sensitive due to its size and construction, to contract and contort to the point of structural failure.

[krisoft]

Do you have a source on that?

[fwungy]

Too early for an official RCA, but the surrounding facts of the known temperature sensitivity of the aquarium, the energy reduction mandates in Berlin, and the unusual cold point to that as the most likely cause.

This poster on Zerohedge provides more details:

I am directly involved in the legal cleanup of this and can provide a little more detail as to what actually happened (Tyler, reach out to me you have my email if you'd like to verify my identity here).

The city of Berlin required the hotel reduce the ambient temperature of the hotel lobby to save on energy due to sanctions. Its been abnormally cold in Berlin the past few nights dipping down to -11°C last night and -12°C the night before that. The water is heated to a constant temperature above 30°C for many of the fish species that lived in the tank.

As the nights got colder and colder, the lower ambient temperature of the air surrounding the tank likely started causing deformations and hairline cracks in the bottom of the tank where the pressure is the greatest. Last night at -11° caused the ambient temperature to drop too low given the reduced heating in the lobby and is what it looks like caused the "sudden unintentional disassembly"/catastrophic failure of the tank.

Everyone is already lawyering up including the city, the HVAC manufacturer, tank manufacturer, HVAC installer, building engineer, hotel - the litigation is going to be fun to watch and work on.

What isn't covered in the news is damage. The tank in 2003 cost €13 million. Today its orders of magnitude more expensive to replace, some of the fish were quite exotic and are expensive losses in and of themselves. Then you have the damage to the hotel lobby and façade, electrical components of the building in the three-story basement are also effected and large amounts of water went into the parking garage where many vehicles are parked not only from the hotel and offices but from an attached apartment complex to the hotel.

Losses are tens of millions. All because the city made the hotel turn down the heat.

[durnygbur]

2011 - Nord Stream gas pipeline opens, 2022 - the world's largest acrylic aquarium in Berlin disintegrates due to the sanctions. What a beautiful butterfly effect... I'm afraid we'll see more of similar incidents in the coming months...

[DemocracyFTW2]

> All because the city made the hotel turn down the heat.

That's a little bit early to start aiming at the city, isn't it? The call to reduce energy consumption is, if anything, coming on as a case of too little, too late if anything given the ongoing crisis over here; it is altogether a reasonable thing to do. As is always the case in Germany with such things, there will be maddening array of if/then/otherwise escape hatches that is part of those rules, and, frankly, if the management of the hotel and the people responsible for the aquarium had been in the know that keeping a constant temperature in the lobby was essential to the structural integrity of the aquarium and they still lowered it, they're mad. If they weren't told they can't be held responsible. If the manufacturer did know or should have known, they'll be in (sorry) hot water.

All of this is conjecture at his point so phrases like "all because the city told them to turn down the heat" have to be understood in the conjunctive or, better, be explicitly written in that voice.

[plastiquebeech]

Whenever I hear people describe a complex chain of events only to conclude that there was a single root cause, I'm reminded of the old proverb:

>For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

>For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

>For want of a horse the rider was lost.

>For want of a rider the message was lost.

>For want of a message the battle was lost.

>For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

>And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

The moral of the proverb is: it is important to ensure that critical systems have redundancy built in.

[UnquietTinkerer]

Someone else posted a link to the source for this quote: https://www.zerohedge.com/user/105370.

The writer pretty clearly has an axe to grind with the city, the sanctions, the war, and a lot more (read some of his other comments). His conclusions might turn out to be true, but I don't think he cares if they are or not.

[Slartie]

Also, the guy uses the "Reichsflagge" as his user picture, which is a pretty sure indicator of him either being one, or at least sympathizing with, right-wing nutjobs. These people are very quickly jumping to conclusions that fit into their irrationally-distorted picture of the world. And very bad at accepting even obvious facts that counter their worldview.