Deck Pets: Fish Tank

What you need

• Windows 10 or 11 with Stream Deck 7.1 or newer.
• Any Stream Deck: Stream Deck, Mini, XL, +, Neo, Stream Deck Mobile or the Corsair Galleon 100 SD (on the Galleon, hold a dial for about 3 seconds to reach its second layer). Each gets its own tank, shop and fish pages.
• Nothing else. No account, no internet connection, no setup.

1. Getting started

1. Find Deck Pets in the Stream Deck actions list and drag the Tank key onto any page.
2. Press it. A new tank offers a line-up: pick a pair first, then one more fish. Hold one to name it yourself.
3. The tank then opens across the whole deck, with Back, Feed, Clean, More and Status along the bottom row. Press Feed and watch them swim up to eat.
4. Press Back to return to your own page. The fish carry on without you, and the Tank key keeps watch.

Demo profiles

A ready-made page with the Tank key and the care keys for each Stream Deck. Download the one for your deck and double-click it to import it into Stream Deck.

• Stream Deck: Tank, Feed, Clean, Lights and Status along the top row
• Stream Deck Mini: Tank, Feed and Clean, then Status and Lights
• Stream Deck XL: the five keys along the top row, with room for your own
• Stream Deck +: Tank, Feed, Clean and Status keys, and the Tank, Feed, Lights and Go dials
• Stream Deck Neo: Tank, Feed, Clean and Status

2. Your first fish, and their names

• A new tank (and a tank you reset) opens this line-up instead of the tank. It asks for a pair first — the same kind in the same colours, one of each sex — so there is always something that can lay eggs. Press one to take it.
• Then it asks for one more fish, any kind you like, and the tank opens with three in it.
• The key beside Back shuffles: a press brings six others, a hold gives the six there other names.
• Hold one of them to name it yourself. Holding a pair names the female first, then the male.

• Press letters to spell a name, up to fourteen; the first letter of each word is capitalised for you.
• The key beside Back rubs one out, and a hold clears the lot. The corner key turns to the next page of letters (a Stream Deck holds twelve at a time, an XL all of them).
• Back keeps the name; hold it to leave the old one alone.
• Any fish can be renamed later: press its card on Your fish, then hold it. Or pick a fish and type a name in Stream Deck's own settings panel.

3. Looking after them

• Feed sprinkles food into the tank. On the tank page, press any part of the tank to drop food right there. Food nobody eats sinks, rots and dirties the water, so feed a little and often. Its bar shows the hungriest fish.
• Clean works one part of the tank at a time. Press Clean and the tank keys get a dashed green outline; press the keys where the algae is and each one sparkles as it is cleaned. The water gets dirtiest where uneaten food rots, and cleaning where a dead fish floats scoops it out. Press Clean again to stop, or hold it to clean the whole tank at once.
• Day (the lights) follows the clock, or stays on or off. At night the tank goes dark, the fish rest near the bottom and get hungry more slowly. It sits on an XL's bottom row, and on More everywhere else.
• Status shows your level, your shells and whatever most needs you. When something has happened, it shows the news first, one line at a time; press to read the next.
• More opens the page with the settings, a picture, the shop, your fish and the screensaver on it.
• The Tank key's rim turns amber when a fish is hungry or the water is getting dirty, and blinks red when a fish is starving, sick or dying. A number in its corner is news you have not read.

Fish get hungry over about a day. A fish left starving, or in filthy water, gets sick and can die, and the keys warn you for hours before that happens. A dead fish floats to the top and fouls the water until you clean it out.

4. Time away

While Stream Deck is closed, the tank keeps living, gently: time passes at half speed, for at most three days, and nothing dies of it. Come back after a weekend and your fish are hungry, not gone. Eggs still hatch while you are away, and nothing eats them. Ignore the tank once you are back, though, and the usual rules apply.

5. Shells, levels and the shop

• Happy grown fish earn shells, and happy fish earn experience. Levels unlock neon tetras, mollies, bettas, angelfish and golden guppies, plants, rocks, a bubbling chest, a castle, a breeding box, brighter lights, a marine setup and three bigger tanks.
• Open the shop by pressing Status once the news is read, or by holding the Tank key or any part of the tank. On a Stream Deck +, turn the Go dial to Shop.
• Press a shelf once to see what it costs, and again within three seconds to buy it. Anything you cannot buy says why.
• The bottom-right key shows your shells and room in the tank, and turns the page on smaller decks.
• Fish have their own ways: bettas squabble with each other, tetras like company, plants keep the water cleaner, and a crowded tank makes everyone unhappy.
• Each kind swims as itself, too: neon tetras shoal and dart about together, mollies graze along the bottom, angelfish glide, bettas patrol slowly, blue tangs cruise the length of the tank, firefish hover, royal grammas keep near their own patch of rock and clownfish bob about theirs. A pleco sits on the glass and rasps the algae off it, which keeps the tank cleaner as well.
• A clean-up crew: cherry and amano shrimp pick leftover food off the sand before it rots, and nerite and mystery snails creep over the glass grazing algae. They keep the tank cleaner and live on its mess, and on the film that is always on the glass, so a spotless tank leaves them hungry but does not see them off. Water left filthy does. They have cards on the fish page too.
• Lose every fish without the shells for any fish in today's shop, and the shop gives you a pair of guppies to start again.

Shells in the sand

• Every few hours a shell settles somewhere along the sand. Press the key it is under and you pick it up: each one is worth about an hour and a half of what your fish earn, so a bigger, happier tank finds better shells.
• They glint, so a key with one on it looks worth pressing, and the Status and Tank keys mention them quietly, after anything that actually needs you.
• Up to three lie about at once, and the sand covers one over after about eight hours if it is never found. They turn up while Stream Deck is shut too, so there is usually something waiting when you come back.
• On the tank page a press picks a shell up instead of dropping food, so you never feed the tank by accident going for one.

Decorating

• Stone and wood: a rock pile, driftwood, dragon stone, lava rock, seiryu stone, a quartz cluster and moss balls, each with a spot of its own along the sand. Plants, a castle and a bubbling chest too, and live rock, coral, an anemone and a wavemaker in a marine tank.
• Backgrounds go behind the glass: a black board, deep water, a planted wall, a rock wall, sunken ruins, and a reef wall for a marine tank. Each is bought once and yours for good, so putting one back up later costs nothing — press its shelf to hang it.
• Food comes in three tins: flakes, sinking pellets and frozen brine shrimp. Better food fills a fish further, pleases it a little and leaves less to rot. One press of Feed drops enough for the tank, a pinch for a pair and a good handful for a full tank, and the fish share it out: the hungriest each claim a pellet, and a weak fish keeps the one it claimed. Hold Feed to drop the food right by the hungriest fish.
• Everything in the tank makes the fish a little happier, and plants, moss, live rock and a wavemaker keep the water clearer for longer.

6. Freshwater or saltwater

A tank is either freshwater or saltwater, and so is everything in it. You start in freshwater, where guppies, neon tetras, mollies, bettas and angelfish live among plastic plants, a rock pile, a bubbling chest and a castle. From level 4 the shop sells a saltwater tank to keep beside it: paler sand, deeper blue, and shelves of clownfish, royal grammas, firefish, a blue tang and a lionfish, with live rock, coral and a wavemaker to put them in.

The lionfish (level 6) is the showpiece of a marine tank and the one fish that is a problem for the rest of it: it drifts rather than swims, fans out a set of spines twice its own height, and when it is really hungry it eats a shrimp or a snail. Keep it well fed and it leaves the clean-up crew alone; let it go hungry and you will lose the odd one. Its shelf in the shop says so.

• The saltwater tank is a second tank: your freshwater one carries on as it was, fish, eggs and all. The two share one wallet and one level, so shells either tank earns can be spent on either.
• To open each one, set a Tank key (or Tank dial) to Freshwater or Saltwater in its settings in Stream Deck, and put one of each on your page. The shop, fish and settings pages then work on whichever tank you opened. A key set to a tank you do not have yet says where to get it.
• If your first tank is saltwater (from before 1.2), the shop sells a freshwater tank to go beside it instead.
• Lights upgrade too. The basic hood is enough for plastic plants; a planted light (level 3) lets live plants grow and brightens the water with shafts of light, and a reef light (level 5) is what coral needs: blue light, a shimmer across the surface and a faint glow at night. A marine tank can go straight to the reef light. The brighter the light, the faster algae grows, so a bright tank wants cleaning more often.
• Live plants, live rock and a wavemaker all keep the water clearer for longer. The clean-up crew changes with the water as well: cherry and amano shrimp and mystery snails are freshwater, turbo snails and peppermint shrimp are marine, and nerite snails are happy in either.
• An empty marine tank with too few shells for a new pair is given clownfish to start again, the way a freshwater one is given guppies.

7. Eggs, fry and rarity

• Every fish comes in the colour varieties a shop really sells: cobalt blue, red tuxedo, sunset, koi, Moscow purple and green lace guppies; neon, cardinal and green neon tetras; black, dalmatian, gold dust, silver and marble mollies; royal blue, crowntail red, koi, platinum and purple dragon bettas; silver zebra, marble, koi, black lace and gold angelfish; ocellaris, black ice and snowflake clownfish. A fish takes one when you buy it, with a little variation of its own, and its card on the fish page says which it is.
• A grown pair that is happy, fed and well lays eggs when the tank has room. They hatch in about a day.
• Hungry fish eat eggs. Feed well, or buy a breeding box, which keeps them safe.
• Fry hatch small, eat more and grow up in a few days, taking their colours from their parents.
• Every fish is Common, Uncommon, Rare, Legendary or Unique, and its card says which. Better fish carry a shine and colours no shop sells, and they earn more shells an hour just for being worth looking at.
• The shop restocks once a day. Most days everything on the shelves is ordinary; now and then a kind comes in Uncommon or better, which the shelf says in its own colour, and costs more to match. The shelf draws the very fish that is for sale, so you can see what you are buying before you buy it, and buying it empties that shelf until tomorrow.
• Breeding is where good fish come from. The odds from a pair are far better than the shop's, and two fish that are something themselves do better again. This is what a breeding box is really for.
• A Unique is a named one-off with artwork of its own, and every kind of fish has one: Penny the copper-struck guppy, Sovereign in a crown, Beacon the neon tetra turned all the way up, Domino the molly marked like a die, Moonlight the pearl-veiled betta, Inkling the angelfish poured in ink and gold, Cobble the plated pleco, Ribbon the clownfish, Twilight the royal gramma split clean down the middle, Comet the firefish trailing light, Firecracker the lionfish with spines a foot long, and Compass the blue tang with a rose on its flank.
• They are bred for, not found: both parents have to be Rare or better, and then it is about one clutch in three. If your own kind of one-off has already been had, a good pair can still hatch one from a fish near enough to them — another livebearer, another community fish, another reef fish — so a tank that keeps breeding always has something to breed for. They never appear in the shop, and each can only turn up once in a tank, which is the reason to keep a good fish rather than sell it on.
• Hold Status, or use the key beside Back in the shop, for Your fish: a card for every fish and clutch. Press a card for its story (age, parents, mood); hold it and press again to rehome that fish and make room.

8. Illness, if you want it

• It is off until you switch it on. Settings has an Illness key beside Simulation and Casual; nothing below happens with it off, and an existing tank is left exactly as it was.
• With it on, water left dirty brings on white spot, and a fish bought from the shop occasionally arrives with it. You can see it: a scatter of white grains over the fish, which is what the real thing looks like.
• It spreads slowly to the others in the same water, so it is worth dealing with rather than watching.
• Two ways out. A bottle of white spot cure from the shop is poured into the water and it is over in about six hours. Or put the water right — clean, and the fish fed — and they shake it off in a day and a half for nothing. The shelf only sells it while somebody is actually ill.
• A breeding box doubles as the sick bay: the first fish to catch it moves in by itself and gives it to nobody while it is in there. Dirty water still reaches everyone, so cleaning is the real answer.
• Left alone it takes about a week to kill a fish, so it is something to notice rather than a punishment for a weekend away. In Casual they fall ill, get better, and never die of it.

9. Stream Deck + dials

On the + the tank takes all eight keys, and the dials do the rest, on the tank, shop and fish pages alike:

• Feed: push or touch to feed; turn to aim where the food drops.
• Clean: the strip is a map of the tank, each part as dirty as it is. Turn along it (the tank keys light up where it points) and push to clean there.
• Lights: turn through following the clock, on and off.
• Go: your level, shells and news. Turn to pick Tank, Shop, Fish or Back, push to go there, touch to read the next news.

The Tank dial goes on your own pages: a live window onto the tank across the touch strip, with its warnings along the bottom. Push or touch it to open the tank.

10. More, and the screensaver

The More key sits in the tank page's bottom row, and holding Back opens it from anywhere. On it:

• Settings, Shop and Your fish, one press away.
• Snapshot: a picture of the whole tank, saved to Pictures\Deck Pets and put on the clipboard. Hold it to open the folder.
• Day: the lights, following the clock or held on or off.
• Status: your level, shells and the latest news.
• Screensaver: the tank over every key of the deck, controls and all. Press any key to bring them back.

Your fish, and your record

• Your fish lists everyone on a card. Press a card and that fish opens across the whole block of keys: a portrait, its name, and bars for health, hunger and happiness, then its age, what kind it is, what it is worth and what it is up to. Press any key to go back, or hold one to rename it. Holding a card in the list still arms rehoming, as before.
• Your record is the tank itself, laid out the same way: how old it is, how clean the water is, who is in it, what it has earned, what it has hatched and lost, how much of it is better than Common, and how many one-of-a-kind fish you have had. On a deck too small to hold it all, the corner key turns the page.
• Nothing sits across a bezel. A fish swimming through a gap reads fine because it is moving, but a number cut in half does not, so each key carries one fact and reads on its own from across the desk.

The status page

Press Status and the tank is laid out a fact to a key: long bars across three keys for clean water, the hungriest fish, the lowest health and happiness, with the right range boxed and a tick where trouble starts, and single keys for what needs you, fish and shrimp, room, eggs and fry, level, shells an hour, the lights and the second tank. Pressing a fact takes you to it: the fish open Your fish, the shells open the shop. News has its own key beside Back. On an XL it all fits on one page; smaller decks turn pages with the corner key.

11. Settings

Hold Back on the tank page for the More page and press Settings, or use the key beside Back on the shop and fish pages, which goes round to it. Press a key to change that setting, hold it to go back the other way; the key beside Back carries on round to the shop. On a Stream Deck the settings run to a second page: the corner key turns to it, and from there goes back to the tank. Everything here is also in any Fish Tank key's settings in Stream Deck, if you would rather.

• Mode: Simulation, or Casual, where nothing dies. Casual changes nothing else: fish still get hungry, the water still gets dirty and the warnings still come, but a neglected fish only ever gets poorly. Switch either way whenever you like; it is kept with the tank.
• Shells and XP: 1x, 2x, 5x or 10x each. Shells multiplies what the fish earn and the shells you find in the sand; XP multiplies experience, so levels and the things they unlock come sooner. Rehoming still pays its usual price. Both keep working while you are away.
• Lights: follow the clock, always on or always off.
• Day starts and Day ends: the hours the tank light follows, anywhere from 05:00 to 23:00.
• Across decks: with more than one Stream Deck plugged in, lay one tank across all of them, left to right or right to left, and fish swim from deck to deck. Opening or leaving the tank then moves every deck.
• Smoothness: frames a second on the tank page, from 2 to 15 (8 to start). Only keys that changed are sent, but lower it if the deck or the computer feels busy.
• Snapshot: takes the picture from here too; hold it to open the folder it went to.
• Name a fish: pick one and type a name, if you would rather use a keyboard than the deck.
• How to play: ten cards of the rules, a key at a time.
• Your record: eight cards of how it has gone — the tank, the fish, where they came from, what has been lost, your care, shells, the oldest and the happiest.
• Back up save: keeps a dated copy of your tank in %APPDATA%\DeckPets\backups (the newest 20 are kept); hold it to open that folder.
• Reset save: starts a new tank, with safeguards: a press arms it (the key turns red and counts down five seconds), then a two-second hold resets. Anything else, or the countdown running out, cancels it. It always backs up first, and will not reset if the backup fails.

12. Your save

One tank is shared by every Stream Deck plugged in. It is saved every half minute and whenever you do something, to %APPDATA%\DeckPets\fishtank.json, with a backup beside it, and it survives plugin updates. If the save is ever damaged, the backup loads instead; if both are, whatever can be kept is kept.

To start again, use Reset save on the settings page (it backs up first), or quit Stream Deck, delete fishtank.json and fishtank.json.bak from that folder, and start it again. The plugin makes no network connections and collects nothing.

Frequently asked

Where are the other dial controls on the Galleon 100 SD?

Each of the Galleon's two dials has two layers. The top layer has Feed and Go; the second layer has Clean and Lights. Hold a dial pressed for about 3 seconds to switch it to its other layer, and again to switch back. The Stream Deck app shows all four at once, but the keyboard uses one layer at a time.

How do I put a backup back?

Quit Stream Deck, copy the backup you want from %APPDATA%\DeckPets\backups over %APPDATA%\DeckPets\fishtank.json, and start Stream Deck again.

Will my fish die while I am on holiday?

No. Time away can make them hungry and weak, but never kills them, and it stops counting after three days. They will need feeding soon after you are back.

Why are there no eggs?

Hold Status for Your fish; the bottom-right key says what is stopping them: no grown pair of the same kind, no room in the tank, or a pair that needs to be happier (fed, clean water, not crowded).

Can I rename a fish?

Yes, and in two ways: press its card on Your fish, hold it, and type the name on the deck, or pick the fish in any Fish Tank key's settings panel and type it there.

How do I get rid of the controls and just watch the tank?

Hold Back for More and press Screensaver: the tank fills every key of the deck. Any press brings the controls back.

Can I have two tanks?

Not yet. Every deck shows the same tank, freshwater or marine. Each Deck Pets animal is its own plugin, so Deck Pets: Rodents sits beside it with its own cage.

The tank page stutters.

Lower Smoothness in any key's settings. Stream Deck draws every key as an image, and a busy computer or a USB hub can fall behind at higher frame rates.

Something is still wrong.

Write to support@teatimeservers.ca with your Stream Deck model and what you saw.