US team headed to Berlin to investigate aquarium rupture

​A Colorado company that helped build the massive aquarium in a Berlin hotel that suddenly burst — sending thousands of gallons of water and more than 1,500 tropical fish into the lobby and the street — is ​dispatching a team to investigate the rupture that initial reports are chalking up to “material fatigue.”

Acrylic panels from Reynolds Polymer Technology, based in Grand Junction, Colo., were used in the construction of the ​82-feet tall AquaDom at the ritzy Radisson Collection Hotel which burst Friday.

The company said in a statement that “at this point, it is too early to determine the factor or factors that would produce such a failure.”

But Iris Spranger, Berlin’s top security official, told German media that the initial indications appear to point to “metal fatigue.”

The huge aquarium ​exploded around 6 a.m. Friday local time and 200,000 gallons of water and more than 1,500 brightly colored tropical fish flooded the lobby and poured out into the street, causing around three hundred guests at the hotel to be evacuated. 

Most of the fish were killed, although some at the bottom of the tank were saved.

With Post wires