Aquariums

Buying or Crafting the Aquarium

Aquariums, and the items needed to stock and maintain it, can be bought from NPC fishermen on most town docks, including a book:

Your New Aquarium
by Les Bilgewater
Catching Fish:
You will need to aquire a fishing net, and a number of fish bowls, from your local fisherman. To use the net, select it from your backpack, and cast it into shallow water. Then we wait. The fish will be so happy to be in your aquarium that they will jump right into your fish bowl when caught!
Just take them home and pour them into your aquarium, and BING! You have a happy new addition to your collection!
Caring for out Underwater Allies:
Fish need clean water and food to survive. Our aquarium comes with a status monitoring aid. Must be Magic! Just look at the front of your aquarium (mouse over). See the helpful and friendly guide? It tells how much food and water is needed to maintain, and improve the quality of your tank. You don’t want to overfeed your fish very often. In fact you only want to feed them every other day. But, remember to keep the water strong and healthy, and add more on a regular basis to keep your aquarium a pretty, sparkely blue.
Well, I hope you get as much enjoyment, collection a beautiful array of our fine, finned, friends from the sea as I do!
Happy Fishing!

The aquarium pictured is ‘south’ facing, an east facing version can also be bought.

Alternately, as of publish 106, recipes can be bought from an npc fisher allowing a carpenter to craft three new aquariums:

• small aquarium, 375,000gp
• wall aquarium, 750,000gp
• large aquarium, 1,250,000gp

Stocking with Fish

Having bought your aquarium, you will now need some fish to stock it. For this you will need:

Aquarium Fish Nets, one for each fish you plan to catch. Any character can catch aquarium fish, but a character with high fishing ability will be able to catch a wider variety. A non-fisherman may sometimes fail to catch a fish, in this case the net will be returned to your pack. Fish in shallow water from the shore or a dock, double click the net and target the water.

Special, ancient aquarium fishing nets may be found in Ancient SoS chests, these will enable a variety of new creatures to be captured for your aquarium

Fish Bowls, you must catch fish in bowls or they will die in your pack, however fish will live indefinitely inside the fish bowl and can even be sold on vendors this way. Bowls can be re-used; catch a few fish, empty them into your aquarium (simply drag and drop the bowl on the aquarium) and the empty bowls will be returned to your pack.

Maintaining your Stock

Mousing over your aquarium will give an information gump that updates every 2 days (48 hours approx.) and notifies you of events or rewards available together with the requirements to maintain your fish and their environment. To maintain the aquarium and keep your fish healthy you will need:

A water pitcher, the one item you cannot buy from the fisher, the nearest inn or tavern will supply this need. You might also consider an endless decanter of water. Drop the pitcher onto the aquarium, it will be returned to your pack.

Fish Food, to keep your fish healthy, they will need to be fed. The information gump tells you how many ‘units’, ie bottles, of fish food are needed, again simply drop the bottle of food onto the aquarium.

The gump gives two figures; to maintain, or to improve. If the water and food states are healthy, feed and water to the ‘maintain’ figure. Improving the food level in a healthy tank will actually lead to it being overfed. In the example you will see that the ‘food added’ and ‘water added’ figures match the ‘maintain’ figure. This means the aquarium has been tended to. An aquarium in need of tending shows ‘food added 0’ and ‘water added 0’. If the water becomes ‘strong’ and/or the food state becomes ‘overfed’ the ‘improve’ option will not appear. While strong water is a desirable state, overfed is not.

One other item is available from the fisherman:

Aquarium Flake Sphere. This serves to maintain the aquarium for 7 days with no input from you, however while under the maintenance of a flake sphere no rewards or events are possible

Single clicking the aquarium gives an option to ‘examine aquarium’ or, when available, view an event or collect a reward. Double clicking will bypass this choice and go straight to the ‘examine’ window. Each creature or item in the aquarium appears on a separate page.

The maximum contents of the aquarium is 30, this can be fish, or aquarium rewards. Beware of filling the aquarium to capacity, if the tank fills up with unclaimed rewards no more can spawn; also while an ‘event’ may simply be an improvement in water quality, it can also be the birth of a new creature in the tank. You will want to leave space for this to occur!

The results of Neglect

There are five states of condition for both water and food. Water state should be ‘strong’ or at least ‘healthy’, the states to avoid are ‘unhealthy’, ‘dying’ and ‘dead’.
Food should be ‘overfed’ or ‘full’, states to avoid are ‘hungry’, ‘starving’ and ‘dead’.

Events and Rewards

An event can be something from a change in water condition to a new creature growing in your tank.
Rewards vary depending on the contents and condition of the aquarium. Here is a list, in no particular order:

• Fish Bones
• Waterlogged Boots
• Captain Blackheart’s Fishing Pole
• Waterlogged Thigh Boots
• An Aquarium Fishing Net
• Message In A Bottle
• Crafty’s Fishing Hat
• Toy Boat
• Shells
• An Island Statue

Moving the Aquarium

Re-deeding an aquarium is done in exactly the same way as most house add-ons, by using an axe, since the introduction of moving barrels in publish 80 it is no longer necessary to remove the fish in order to do this.

Fish In Your Net