Nearly fifty quid? To see some fish? For a moment I must have looked a bit like a goldfish, as my mouth opened and shut in astonishment after hearing the admission fees for Bristol's new Blue Reef Aquarium.

A single adult ticket costs £13.50, a child ticket costs £9.20, and a family ticket costs £43.40.

Add on the price of getting into the city centre by bus or train – or by car and paying for parking – and the total cost of visiting the city's latest attraction comes closer to £50.

And that's before you've bought anything from the cafe, or the souvenir shop.

Is it a bit, ahem, fishy that Blue Reef in Bristol is charging more than it does at its four other aquariums in the UK?

The company insists not, pointing out that the aquarium which will open in Bristol on Friday is four times the size of the one in Hastings.

To be fair, there are also all sorts of overheads, from staff wages to cleaning out the tanks.

I have particular sympathy when it comes to the latter, as I vividly recall the nausea-inducing, time-consuming performance involved when my boys had a mere couple of pet goldfish.

Yes, building, staffing and maintaining a massive aquarium doesn't come cheap, and cleaning out fish isn't pleasant.

But even so, £43.40 for a family ticket?

The national average wage is £24,000 a year. Take off tax and that's just over £18,000 a year, or £355 net per week. Or to bring it down to basics, just over £50 a day.

Even if the admission fee is good value, some parents could find it hard to part with most of a day's taxed income to see some fish, even if they are rare species in a magnificent aquarium with four tunnels.

True, the price includes seeing nature films at the IMAX cinema, but I'd rather have the option of paying less and not seeing the films.

It could, of course, be argued that I don't need to complain about admission costs to Blue Reef or anywhere else for that matter.

There's a simple option for anyone who objects to what they consider to be high admission charges. Don't go.

But having seen the spectacular photos of Blue Reef in the Evening Post this week, I want to see it for myself – which is why I'm getting bothered about the price.

So it may mean one of those single been-there-done-that visits.

We did that at the loss-making Wildwalk, which previously occupied the building in Anchor Road that is home to Blue Reef.

The price wasn't the problem as a family ticket was around £20.

However, after trailing around in steamy heat trying to spot any wildlife, we didn't feel any desire to become regular visitors.

By contrast, there looks like being lots to see and do at Blue Reef.

Unfortunately, no matter how good it is, some could find a visit – or return trips – unaffordable.