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In a discreet corner of the Albuquerque Aquarium, near the jellyfish, sits a 500-gallon tank full of amazingly colorful fish.

There's the ringed angel fish, with a black body, bright blue stripes and a white tail. Then a clown triggerfish swims by, sporting white polka dots and a bluish body.

This sort of color is hard to find in the aquarium, which generally focuses on Atlantic fish known for more moderate hues.

If Mayor Martin Chavez gets his way, however, habitat for the unusually colorful Pacific fish is going to be much easier to find.

One thousand times easier, to be exact.

An $8 million, 500,000-gallon, three-story tank is a centerpiece of the mayor's $158 million capital improvement budget, a semiannual series of public infrastructure projects that voters will be asked to approve Oct. 2. In the coming weeks, the City Council will also be looking over the measure.

The Albuquerque Biological Park is a big winner in the proposal. Besides the aquarium, Chavez wants to spend $2 million for renovating tiger and elephant areas at the Rio Grande Zoo, as well as constructing exhibits for other Asian animals.

Add a new section to the Japanese Garden, renovations at Tingley Beach and general repair around the whole campus, and the dollar figure designated for the biopark cashes in at $12.7 million.

Proponents of the spending, like aquarium Manager Holly Casman, say it will help further the biopark's cultural and educational mission. In the case of the new aquarium tank - almost double the size of the existing 285,000-gallon shark tank - "it just opens up the other half of the story," she said.

And over at the zoo, expect more natural looking exhibits if the spending plan goes through, said Tom Silva, the assistant director of the biopark.

"We want to get away from concrete as much as possible as a surface and have a more natural exhibit," he said.

Yet before voters get a chance to buy in, the City Council will have to weigh in, and it's far from clear how they will treat the spending idea.

While not addressing the biopark projects specifically, Council President Debbie O'Malley did express some reservations about big projects in general.

"My concerns are (about) building things that require a lot of operating expenses," O'Malley said. "I think that we're going to look at these projects very carefully."

O'Malley added the council is concerned about the basic city infrastructure, such as road repair.

Chavez maintains the city can take care of the essentials and build world-class attractions.

"A complete city addresses all of those needs," he said, adding, "These amenities are a small percentage of our capital program."

Still another hurdle: voters. In political time, October is a long way off, but the city will have some persuading to do, especially with people like Christina Chavez-Apodaca, president of the Santa Barbara-Martineztown Neighborhood Association. The Martineztown and Barelas neighborhoods flooded during the summer because of inadequate city infrastructure to handle record rains, and the result was inundation that displaced some residents.

The mayor set aside $4 million for those neighborhood improvements, but to Chavez-Apodaca, the principle still stands.

"To me it's the nuts and bolts," Chavez-Apodaca said. "Those things have to be dealt with. . . . Is a tiger going to help that?"