Discovery World

A model of the entire Great Lakes watershed built to scale addresses freshwater issues, stewardship, and the relationship between humans and freshwater resources. It also features an artificially induced weather event. With the push of a button, visitors can call for "rain" to fall down upon this watershed, observing where the water flows and how run-off pollutants navigate the region. The perimeter of the exhibit features several tank habitats. Inhabitants include an Alligator Snapping Turtle, Tiger Salamanders, a Northern Spiny Softshell Turtle, an Ornate Box Turtle, a Three-Toed Box Turtle, a Blanding's Turtle, a Red-eared Slider, North American Wood Turtles, a Corn Snake, a Bull Snake, Pumpkinseed, and Bluegill. Several ice-age and prehistoric animal skulls are found throughout the exhibit as well.

The Reiman Aquarium occupies the lower level of Discovery World. Tank exhibits replicate a wide variety of aquatic habitats, including that of Lake Michigan, Amazon Basin rivers, the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, the Caribbean Sea, and the African Great Lakes.

Lake Michigan Tank

The Lake Michigan tanks is a 75,000-gallon cold freshwater tank in the center of the aquarium. Dozens of other tanks follow a path around the exhibit. This tank is home to Lake and Shovelnose Sturgeon, Largemouth Bass, White and Black Crappie, Paddlefish, Northern Pike, Walleye, Freshwater Drums, Bowfin, Spotted, Longnose, and Shortnose Gar, Bigmouth and Smallmouth Buffalo, Channel Catfish, White Bass, and Common Carp, all of which are native to the Great Lakes. Aquarists and interns conduct one cleaning dive a week to manually scrub algae and feed the fish.

"L" Tanks

The aquarists call these the "L" tanks due to their unconventional shape. These tanks occupy two levels, while tank glass penetrates the floor between these levels. This allows visitors to watch tank inhabitants swim beneath their feet.

• Great Lakes Comp Tank
  • This is essentially a smaller, less diverse version of the Lake Michigan tank. This first of the two "L" tanks features Bluegill, Black Crappie, and Smallmouth Bass.
• North Atlantic Tank
  • This North-Atlantic-simulating tank holds cold saltwater. This second "L" tank feature Striped Bass, Snowy Grouper, and Summer Flounder.

Amazon Basin River Tank

The freshwater Amazon Basin River system tank features a Silver Arowana, Bigtooth River Stingray, Blood Red Parrotfish, Black Ghost Knifefish, Jurupari, Marbled Angelfish and Motoro/Leopoldi hybrid Stingray. This large tank is placed in a corner from which an apron of glass extends out through the floor, allowing visitors to walk over and view tank inhabitants beneath their feet.

Caribbean Tank

This 65,000-gallon warm saltwater tank is the most colorful and active tank and is displayed via an upside down halfpipe design, which visitors can walk through. This tank is home to a Rooster Hogfish, a Sargassum Triggerfish, two Bamboo Sharks, Goatfish, French and Queen Angelfish, a Cownose Stingray, and a variety of Grunts, a Scrawled Filefish.

Here, aquarists and interns also conduct one cleaning dive a week to scrub algae.

Aquarium intern gives "Touch Tank Talk'" on freshwater Lake Sturgeon.

Touch Tanks

There are two touch tanks where visitors can have a hands-on interaction with some aquatic creatures.

A cold freshwater touch tank features young Lake Sturgeon who, when large enough, will be relocated to the larger Lake Michigan tank to join a larger, more diverse environment more appropriate for an adult sturgeon.

A much warmer saltwater touch tank features Atlantic Stingray and Cortez Round Stringray. Under employee supervision, children and other visitors can learn how to responsibly interact with aquatic life.

Weird and Wild

The final hallway of the aquarium features several tanks with a handful of unique organisms. These include a South American tank, home to a Black Ghost Knifefish; an interesting relative to the Electric Eel which, too, can generate its own electric field. This is used to navigate its environment. A terrarium features several Blue Poison Dart frogs. In captivity, these frogs are not poisonous as they acquire their poison through bioaccumulation within their ecosystem. Another tank is home to the tiny freshwater Pea Pufferfish. To follow is a Piranha tank, an Axolotl tank, Cichlid tank, and Amazon tank. Finally is the tank holding a West African Lungfish, a primitive fish belonging to the lobe-finned fish class Sarcopterygii. In addition to having fleshy, boned appendages, lungfish also have a modified air bladder used to gasp surface air, a useful trait when considering their native oxygen-deprived waters.

Les Paul's House of Sound features three different areas: Les's Early Years, The Musician on the Road to Stardom, and Friends of Les Paul. The exhibit includes Paul’s Grammy Awards, the first Gibson guitar Paul produced, and the "Klunker" he used.

This large interactive model of the Great Lakes features flora and fauna that populate the Great Lakes, an interactive hydrologic cycle that allows visitors to control the weather, and a Sky Bridge that offers the opportunity to see the Great Lakes in a whole new way. The permanent exhibit was designed by Grace La and James Dallman of LA DALLMAN and was published in the Berlin monograph 1000x Architecture of the Americas.

This exhibit explains how the water used in homes eventually flows back to Lake Michigan. Other features of this exhibit include a look into Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District processes, Milwaukee Water Works, and Milwaukee’s Deep Tunnel project, which reduces the amount of wastewater dumped into Lake Michigan each year. The permanent exhibit, comprising more than twenty interactive installations, was designed by Grace La and James Dallman of LA DALLMAN.

88-foot replica of the Challenge, a mid-1800s Great Lakes freight schooner

This exhibit allows the public to design products to take home, experience a custom-built automated factory, and learn modern engineering trends. Visitors can operate the controls of the retractable domes of Miller Park and the Milwaukee Art Museum.[6]

Other exhibits at Discovery World include The Challenge (an 88 ft replica of a 19th century schooner), Simple Machine Shipyard, Driving and Flight Simulators, All Aboard, Milwaukee Muscle, Power On, Physics and You & The Innovation Station, Virtual Explorer, Clean Air Trek, BIG, and The Distant Mirror.