Feeding & hunger

When a fish needs food, and what looking after it earns.

Food is free

Choose Feed and click the water to drop some food. Basic food is free and never runs out, so feeding never costs you a coin. Hungry fish eat first and spread out over the food, so a few pellets dropped where your fish swim feed them all; a fish that has had enough leaves the rest to the other fish.

A newly hatched fish needs its first meal. After that, a growing fish gets hungry again 4 hours after each feeding, or a third of its growth time after it if that is longer. A grown fish gets hungry far more slowly: a meal it eats once it is grown keeps it fed for 2 days.

Select a fish and choose Feed on its card or in its menu to drop food just for that fish: it swims to it, and no other fish takes it.

Seven foods

Flake is free and always will be; every other food is an upgrade you choose, never a gate. Three more foods, Green Wafer, Worm Bites and Recovery Broth, are mixed in the Workshop, and with the Live Food Culture research Live Brine hatches in its cone; none of them is sold. A jar that runs short feeds what is left as a smaller meal, and an empty jar feeds flake; buy food packs in the Shop. A growth food (red worms, Worm Bites) shows the growth it gains on the growth ring of the fish card right after the meal, and in the bubble over the fish.

Flake · free, from a tin that never runs out.
Pellets · keep a fish fed twice as long, and move its whole care clock out with it.
Brine shrimp (frozen) · three times as long, put health back, and always count as a perfect meal for quality.
Mysis shrimp (frozen) · two and a half times as long, a little health, quality a touch faster.
Nori sheet · twice as long, quality faster. Grazers love it.
Krill · two and a half times as long, a little health, quality faster.
Red worms (live) · from the Workshop's culture drawer: twice as long, health, quality faster and a little faster growth. Fresh for 48 hours, then stale: still a meal, without the extras. Worms are never lost.
Recovery Broth · made in the Workshop: twice as long, puts almost a third of the health back, and always counts as a perfect meal.
Well-fed · a fish whose last meal was Workshop food or live food, sold while that meal still keeps it fed, sells for 6% more.

Portions

A meal does not always fill a fish. Flake fills an empty fish to 50% and pellets to 70%; every other food fills it. Feeding a fish that is still partly fed tops it up, never past full, and a paid meal then costs only the part it fills. The food picker shows how full a meal will leave the fish you have chosen, and its card how full its last meal left it. A ring over a fish shows how full each meal left it, gold once it has had enough: at 90% or more a fish is full, its card says Full and it leaves food alone.

A smaller meal makes a fish hungry sooner, which pauses its growth and makes its next meal late sooner. It never makes a fish ill or lost any sooner: its health keeps the clock of a full meal. Two flake meals fill a fish as one always did. A fish that is not yet full can be topped up 8 seconds after its last meal; once it is full, the next meal waits 20 seconds. A top-up never shortens a meal: a fish fed a longer-lasting food keeps the time it had and gains only what the new food adds, and a top-up that adds nothing costs nothing.

Food in grams

Food lives in jars in your Pantry, in grams. Every fish has an appetite in grams that grows with the square root of its egg price, and half that once it is grown. A Clownfish eats 2 g a meal, a Grouper about 64 g, so dear fish eat far less than their price suggests. When you load a feeder, it says how many fish are hungry right then and how many meals they eat at once.

Buy food in packs from the shop's Food tab or from a jar's card: 100 g at the list price, 500 g at 10% off, 2 kg at 20% off. A jar holds one food and any amount of it. Green Wafer, Worm Bites and Recovery Broth are made in the Workshop. Each food's card shows which of your fish love it and how long it keeps: choose a size, and Buy shows its price, what it saves and about how many meals it makes for your aquarium.

Loved and disliked foods

Every fish eats one of five ways: grazers, hunters, plankton eaters, sand sifters and everyday eaters. A food it loves does half as much again beyond the fed time, and a little heart rises from the fish. A food it dislikes still feeds it, but only the fed time counts, and it gives a little shrug. When a fish eats a food it loves, a ×1.5 chip rides the heart over it.

Grazers love nori and dislike krill and worms. Hunters love krill and worms and dislike nori. Plankton eaters love brine shrimp, mysis and krill. Sand sifters love worms and mysis and dislike nori. Everyday eaters take everything the same. Flake and pellets suit every fish.

Nori and krill leave a faint sheen in their colour around a fish for 12 hours after the meal, green-blue for nori and orange for krill. Visitors see it too. It is only a glow: it changes nothing else.

What feeding earns

Feeding a hungry fish by hand earns experience: more the higher your level, and more for a meal that fills it than for a top-up. Feeding it again straight away doesn't repeat the reward: it has to get hungry again first. A meal the auto-feeder serves earns none.

While you're away

An auto-feeder feeds each fish from its hopper the moment it gets hungry, for as long as the hopper lasts. It loads its food from your Pantry's jars. Grown fish get hungry far less often, so the hopper lasts much longer for them. Feeder meals count toward quality just like the same meal by hand, but they earn no XP and no coins, so feeding by hand still pays more, and it still works with a feeder installed.

A fish eats a food it dislikes from the feeder only once its Food reading is down to 25%, so a food it loves, given by hand, keeps its value: it is eaten at once and counts for quality and the Well-fed bonus. The wait never makes a fish ill, because the feeder serves it before its health drops.

Too long without food

Hunger matters. A growing fish is lost if it goes unfed for 1 day or twice its species' growth time, whichever is longer, counted from its last meal or from hatching. A grown fish lasts far longer: it falls ill after about 5 days without food and is lost after 1 week 3 days, or about 1 week 1 day behind glass gone green, so a week away does not cost you a finished aquarium. Its card warns you when it's starving.

A lost fish can be collected with the Net, but it pays nothing. Your tutorial fish and legendary fish can never be lost this way.

In the game: https://fishies.lol/wiki/mechanics/feeding · Fishies 0.8.24

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