Megaquarium

[DaLilFishie]

If you're looking for a more aquatic-based zoo game, give Megaquarium a try. It doesn't have as many animals as ZT2, with 90 marine species in the base game, and an additional 30 freshwater species in the Freshwater Frenzy DLC, but it does have an active modding community, just recently hitting 300 mods on the Steam Workshop. Currently the DLC and official mod support are only on the Steam version. Unfortunately it can be hard to build realistic exhibits, as building and decoration placement is grid-based, but mods help a lot in that regard. If that sounds good to you, here's the Steam page: Megaquarium on Steam

 

[WalkingAgnatha]

What mods are you using to help build realistic exhibits? Because imo there isn't really any mods that make the game more realistic.

 

[DaLilFishie]

What mods are you using to help build realistic exhibits? Because imo there isn't really any mods that make the game more realistic.

Some of the decoration mods that add different rock shapes (some with coral/plants on them) that only take up 1 grid space (so you can kind of make them join together, making more organic shapes) help a lot with that. The rock borders are really cool too.
These are some of the best ones:
Steam Workshop::RickReptile custom rocks pack
Steam Workshop::RickReptile rock borders
Steam Workshop::RickReptile rock background pack
Steam Workshop::RickReptile roots pack
Steam Workshop::Brown Rock pack

 

[PicanBird]

Boosting this thread. Today the developer released a second DLC: Architect's Collection
Adding some fish such as: Napoleon Wrasse, Garden Eels, Steephead Parrotfish and many others. But also more decoration/design tools to help your aquariums come much more to live!

Megaquarium: Architect's Collection on Steam

 

[CrashMegaraptor]

Sounds awesome. Too bad the Switch version is still stuck on vanilla.