Deck Pets: Fish Tank, a fish tank on your Stream Deck

A Stream Deck with its top two rows showing one fish tank across ten keys: neon tetras, a betta, a molly and an angelfish swimming over sand, plants, a rock pile, a castle, a bubbling chest and a breeding box with eggs in it. The bottom row has Back, Feed, Clean, More and a Status key showing level 6, 342 shells and ten fish, all well. — A made-up tank on a Stream Deck. The gaps between the keys are part of the tank, so a fish swimming across disappears behind the frame for a moment instead of jumping.

What you need

Windows 10 or 11 with Stream Deck 7.1 or newer.
Any Stream Deck: Stream Deck, Mini, XL, +, Neo or Stream Deck Mobile. Each gets its own tank, shop and fish pages.
Nothing else. No account, no internet connection, no setup.

1. Getting started

In testing. Fish Tank is being played on real decks before it goes to the Elgato Marketplace. This page will link to the listing when it is up.

Find Deck Pets in the Stream Deck actions list and drag the Tank key onto any page.
Press it. A new tank offers a line-up: pick a pair first, then one more fish. Hold one to name it yourself.
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.
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 Stream Deck showing a line-up of six fish to pick from: a silver molly, a cobalt blue guppy, two cardinal neon tetras, a koi guppy and a gold dust molly, each with its name and sex, and a key saying pick 2 more. — First a pair: six matched pairs to choose from, each in its own colours.

A new tank (and a tank you start over) 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.

A Stream Deck showing the naming page: the letters A to L on the keys, a done key with a green tick, a rub out key, and a corner key reading naming Bubbles, Bubba, 5 of 14, letters 1 of 3. — Naming on the deck: the letters go on the keys, and the corner shows the name so far.

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 twice on Your fish. Or pick a fish and type a name in Stream Deck's own settings panel.

3. Looking after them

Five keys: Feed with a nearly empty amber bar, Clean with a full green bar, Day following the clock, Status at level 6 with 342 shells, and a Tank key showing a small window onto the tank.

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

Five shop keys: a neon tetra for 15 shells, a golden guppy that unlocks at level 8, the grand tank that unlocks at level 7, the marine setup for 150 shells, and the wallet at level 6, fresh, with 342 shells.

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, so a spotless tank starves them. They have cards on the fish page too.
Lose every fish with no shells left, and the shop gives you a pair of guppies to start again.

Decorating

A Stream Deck showing a decorated tank: a planted wall behind the water, driftwood, a moss ball, a quartz cluster, a castle and a breeding box along the sand, with tetras and a betta swimming. The bottom row reads Back, Feed with sinking pellets, Clean, More and Status at level 11 with 486 shells. — A tank with a planted wall up, driftwood and stone along the sand, and sinking pellets in the tin.

Five shop keys: dragon stone, a quartz cluster, driftwood, the rock wall background and frozen brine shrimp.

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 a pinch for a pair and a handful for a full tank, and the fish share it out, the hungriest claiming a pellet each.
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 Stream Deck showing a saltwater tank: clownfish, a royal gramma, firefish and a blue tang over pale coral sand, with live rock, coral, a wavemaker on the left wall, a turbo snail and a peppermint shrimp. The bottom row has Back, Feed, Clean, More and a Status key at level 9 with 512 shells. — The same plugin, set up as a reef: paler sand, deeper water, live rock and coral.

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. A marine setup in the shop (level 4) changes the water: paler sand, deeper blue, and shelves of clownfish, royal grammas, firefish and a blue tang, with live rock, coral and a wavemaker to put them in.

Five shop keys from a marine tank: a clownfish for 60 shells, a blue tang for 160, coral with three of three owned, a wavemaker with one of one, and the wallet reading level 9, marine, 512 shells under the reef light.

Changing the water means finding homes first for the fish that could not take it (hold their card on the fish page), and waiting for any eggs to hatch. The shelf says so until you have.
Nothing is thrown away. Your plants, castle and the rest are packed away while the tank is marine, and come back out if you change it back.
Lights upgrade too. The basic hood is enough for plastic plants; a planted light (level 3) lets live plants grow, and a reef light (level 5) is what coral needs. 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 no shells left is given a pair of clownfish to start again, the way a freshwater one is given guppies.

7. Eggs, fry and rare colours

Five keys from the fish page: a clutch of guppy eggs safe in the box, a young guppy fry in a rare colour, an angelfish with its food and health bars, the same angelfish's story, and the roster of ten fish.

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.
Now and then a baby hatches in a rare colour the shop never sells. It twinkles, and it runs in families.
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. Stream Deck + dials

A Stream Deck + whose eight keys show the tank, with a touch strip above the four dials showing Feed with its aim marker, Clean, Day with the clock, on and off modes, and Go with Tank, Shop, Fish and Back.

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.

Three touch strip panels: the Tank dial's live window onto the tank, the Feed dial aimed to the right, and the Go dial pointing at Fish.

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.

9. More, and the screensaver

A Stream Deck showing the More page: Settings, Snapshot, Day, Screensaver and Status along the top row, Shop and Your fish below, and Back in the corner. — More: everything that does not fit around the tank.

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.

10. Settings

Five keys: two How to play cards about feeding and warnings, two record cards about the tank and your care, and the Screensaver key. — How to play and Your record, a card at a time.

A Stream Deck showing the settings page: Mode set to Casual, Lights following the clock, Day starts 08:00, Day ends 22:00, Across decks left to right, Smoothness 8 a second, the Pictures folder, a card of your record, and Start over. Back and the Shop key are along the bottom. — Hold Back for the settings page: one setting to a key, and a press changes it.

Hold Back on the tank page (or on the shop or fish pages) for the Settings page. 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. 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.
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.
Start over: hold it, then press again, and the tank is replaced by a new line-up to pick from, with 20 shells. There is no undo, so it asks twice.

11. 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 over, use Start over on the settings page, 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

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 twice on Your fish 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.