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EDIT: 8/27/10
Note - Due to changes in fish and booty grab this help article needs a rewrite. I've put off doing so until I have the information needed. By now, most folks reading this know dolphins got pulled from the fish shop. Subsequently their price on MP has increased to around 700k. Gwees got nerfed. In a recent ATA (8/23) Lanzer commented they will be releasing some new fish soon. I'm sure they won't have dolphin specs but MAYBE they will be decent booty grab fish. And of course their is the problem with Booty Grab not working for Internet Explorer issues unless they use a direct link to the tank. The aquarium team has (AFAIK) still not even acknowledged that problem exists let alone fix it.

The outcome of these issues will greatly affect the ROI you can expect from a tank of HT fish. Thank you for your patience.

EDIT: 12/27/10
Yeah, so, who knows when we will get more booty grab fish. Aquarium projects seem to be on hold for now. Use the info below for good general guidelines but know the specific numbers are probably inaccurate these days.
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Q: Will a tank full of expensive fish pay for itself?
A: It CAN if you do your homework and put forth the effort.

There are quite a few things to consider when deciding which fish to purchase or even if a high trigger fish tank is for you. I think this article will be way too long if I try to cover every area in detail. Instead I will try to touch on each area and let you do some research. If you have a specific question post it here and I will answer it if I can.

First the basics:
Your tank ‘glows’ several times per day at random times for a period of 12 minutes. This is when people can play the booty grab game on your tank and catch gold. The amount you get is equal to 1/4th (25%) of what the player won. So for example if the player won 2000 gold you get 500 gold. This is how you get gold from your fish tank. You can not see or play your own glow.

EXPOSURE:
Each time your tank glows up to 34 people can play your booty grab game. Each user can play only once but they can play you again later if they see you glow again. As a tank owner you want as many people as possible to play each game. This is why you want to be posted in as many booty grab threads as reasonably possible.

Suppose your tank glow 10 times in a day. If only 2 people stumble across your glowing tank and make 2000 gold each then you made 1,000 gold for the day. If every game maxed out you could make 10 games x 34 players x 2,000 each x 25% = 170,000 gold to you. Obviously I am rounding numbers and you will probably never max out all your games but you get the idea. For more comments on tank exposure see this thread:
GLOW THREAD and REPLY link

LOG IN DAILY TO KEEP GLOWING
If you do not log in to your account for more than 24 hours your tank will stop glowing. Please note this appears to be 24 hour period, not calendar day. So for example if you log in at 8AM on Monday but do not log in until 5 PM on Tuesday your tank was not glowing for 9 hours (from 8AM-5PM Tue).


GLOW THREAD:
Make a glow thread in the aquarium forum and put a link to a reply box in your signature and/or your posts in the booty grab threads. Some folks look for glowing tanks in the Aquarium forum rather than playing booty grab threads. This helps them see you glowing. For detailed information about how to do this see this thread:
GLOW THREAD and REPLY link

CHOOSING A FISH:
Oy! Lots to think about here but I’ll try to hit on the main things. When trying to decide which fish has the best ‘bang for the buck’ for you some factors to consider are:
Price of fish (Gaia Cash or Marketplace gold), life span of fish, is the fish high trigger?, does it drop other items?, how much gold does the fish drop?, HOW does it drop the gold?, gold cap, swim pattern, fish graphics, for mixed tanks – will the fish be happy with the same tank settings? And yeah, even with all that I probably missed a thing or two. I’ll talk briefly about each item.

PRICE OF FISH:
I think this one is pretty straight forward. 17 Dark Knight fish at 40k cost you 680,000 gold. 17 Dolphins at 300k cost you 5.1 million gold. Obviously how much you spend has direct correlation to whether or not the gold you generate will pay for the fish.

LIFE SPAN:
How long is the fish expected to live? A dolphin lives for four months or approximately 17.33 weeks. You have a lot longer to recoup your cost than say a mini-monster which typically lives 2 to 4 weeks.

HIGH TRIGGER:
The term high trigger (or low or medium trigger) refers to the likelihood the fish will glow during any particular game. Some fish are extremely high trigger in that ALL of them will glow during EVERY game. Some examples are Dolphins and many mini monsters like Lawnsharks and Airsharks.

A fish only makes gold for you when it is actually glowing. This is one reason Watermeats have lost popularity to dolphins. Watermeats are great but even with a full tank of them you will probably only see 2 to 8 of them glowing during any given game. A tank full of Dolphins means 17 of them will be glowing.

BONUS ITEMS:
Some fish have a chance of randomly dropping a bonus item during game play. A Hermit Cat or a pink or blue magical gift box. The tank owner does not get anything extra when the player captures a bonus item so this isn’t really a factor in determining if your fish will pay for themselves. It might play a small role if you feel more people will want to play your tank because the fish might drop items.

HOW MUCH GOLD DOES EACH FISH DROP?:
It’s no surprise that if a fish drops a lot more gold the player is likely to be able to catch more gold.

HOW IS THE GOLD DROPPED?:
Fish drop gold in various colors / values. Yellow gold is worth 1 gold each. Green gold is worth 2, Blue gold is worth 3 and Red gold is worth 5. Other things being equal it is easier to catch 5 red gold than 20 yellow gold.

The other factor closely related to this is lag due to gold. 1,000 gold value of red gold on the screen is 200 objects. 1,000 gold of yellow gold on the screen is 1,000 objects (plus the fish). Momo monkeys drop lots of gold but it is all yellow. Because of this a tank full of momos can be an extremely laggy game on computers with lesser graphics cards. It boils down to how many objects (fish, avatar, power up/downs and gold) does the graphic card have to keep drawing on the screen? Your computer may be up to it but the computers of many of the folks trying to play your tank may not.

GOLD CAP:
Some fish have an artificial cap on how much gold you are allowed to win from each fish during a given game. For example watermeats have a cap of 300 gold. If you are playing a tank of six glowing watermeats and you capture 300 gold from one of them that fish will become faded and stop dropping gold even though the game is not over yet. The other fish will continue to drop unless their limit is reached.

I have played games where a couple of watermeats capped out on me but IMO the vast majority of the time this is a non-issue with the fish popular for booty grab. Dolphins have a cap of 450 gold each which might as well not be there because they do not drop that much gold before the game times out. You would have to get very very lucky with power ups to hit cap on a dolphin.

NOTE: Absol's aquarium analyzer can give you more information about a tank. If the fish will glow during the next game, how much of what kind of gold they drop, chance of dropping a bonus item, gold cap, etc. Read more about it here:
Aquarium Analyzer / Glow Timer

SWIM PATTERN / GOLD PATTERN:
This is less of an issue but still worth considering. Watermeats pretty much stay in one spot during a game and drop their gold mostly straight down. Dolphins swim back and forth some but their gold still drops mostly straight down. It kind of comes in a predictable ‘Z’ pattern and you can usually zig zag through the thickest parts of the gold cloud. Some fish like turtles swim back and forth pretty fast and some like orange snail spit the gold out to the side in spastic patterns. Some fish have gold that falls at various speeds. These things can make catching the same amount of gold more difficult.

FISH GRAPHICS:
This is a lag factor issue. A tank full of simply drawn fish that do not move around much (e.g. watermeats) does not make the computer’s graphic card work as hard as fish with more details (e.g. mermaids) or fish that move around a lot in the tank.

FISH HAPPINESS:
This is pretty straight forward. You probably know you need to set your tank settings (music, light, temperature) to settings the fish like to keep them happy / healthy. If you plan to mix fish you should choose fish that like common settings so you can keep everyone happy.

Other Factors:

PURE TANKS:
For beauty and esthetics I like some of the mixed tanks I see. For pure booty grabbing gold generating I am in favor of pure tanks (e.g. all dolphins or all airsharks). I do realize this is a matter of opinion. In my experience though I get more playing pure tanks because it is easier to see the pattern of the gold dropping and easier to see the power up / down items. I have seen some combinations that seemed to work well together such as dolphins and stone coatls.

ESTHETICS:
This is related to the pure tank conversation above. Some people consider playing a full tank of dolphins (or other fish) boring and prefer to play mixed tanks. I own pure dolphin tanks but I still enjoy playing a good mix tank from time to time. You may feel you will get more people to play your tank because it looks more interesting / less boring with a creative mixture of fish. I do not share this opinion but I’m putting it out there to be fair. The limited conversations I have had with other tank owners on this issue suggests pure tanks pay more gold. I’ve had a few people who play my booty grab thread tell me they like to play the mixed tank section for the variety. I’ve had a LOT of people who play my booty grab thread tell me they love having so many pure dolphin tanks together.

INVITABILITY / POPULARITY:
What ever tank you come up with you will need to get invites to a lot of booty grab threads to achieve the desired level of exposure. My main tanks are in over 200 booty grab threads and still do not max out every game. (Though I do enjoy a great many maxed or nearly full games.) My secondary tanks are in about a third as many threads and generate 60-75% of the gold the main tanks do.

Like it or not ‘popular’ fish are easier to get invites for. When I had my Dark Knight fish I was getting a reasonable number of invites but I had to seek out the threads myself and many times got turned down because my fish were not good enough. When I switched to dolphins the invites started seeking me out. In this morning’s PMs I had invites to four booty grab threads. While typing this help document this evening I received two more.

FULL TANKS:
I am of the opinion your tank should be full or very nearly full (15 or more fish). If you have a tank full of dolphins or some other awesome fish people will go out of their way to play your tank. If you have two or three dolphins in a tank that is mostly empty or has otherwise mediocre fish few people will play it. As such each dolphin will generate more gold for you in a full tank than a partial tank. It also affects the invitability factor discussed above. “Full Pure Dolphin” are like magic code words for getting invited to booty grab threads. “Six Dolphins” – meh! Not so much. smile

SO YEAH THAT’S GREAT AND ALL BUT HOW MUCH GOLD DO YOU MAKE?
I am always hesitant to discuss this topic because it draws the beggars out of the woodwork. Most of them do not need encouraging. So, let me preface this section with a comment to the beggars:

[rant=on]
NO, I will NOT give you a dolphin, I will NOT give you gold, I will not give you my grandmother’s china. I DO NOT GIVE TO BEGGARS no matter how much you whine or threaten me. I also do not accept random friend requests from people I have never heard of. I DO NOT like people who try to scam or threaten me and I WILL (and do) REPORT YOU!
[/rant]

Okay, end of rant. My apologies to the rest of you. The beggars are bad enough but I have literally even had people try to blackmail me for a million gold.

My main tanks consistently make me 115-120,000 gold each per day. My lesser tanks are making me 60-80,000 gold per day each. All are full pure dolphin. This sounds great but please keep a few factors in mind:
1. I spent a lot to get the dolphins in the first place.
2. I have spent MILLIONS of gold on replacement dolphins for when the current ones die. This past weekend alone when dolphin prices dropped during the fish sale I purchased 59 dolphins. If Gaia decides to drastically nerf the dolphins I may have to spend many millions on some other fish to keep the process going.
3. I have put many hours into seeking out booty grab threads and getting invites. Yes, it is much easier now that I have full dolphin tanks but it still requires a time commitment.
4. In a related issue I have spend 1.6+ million gold and counting on contest prizes for my booty grab thread. Obviously not everyone has to make their own booty grab thread.

Overall though I would say each dolphin generates at least twice its cost in gold during its life time so yes, they are paying for themselves. When I had my Dark Knight fish they were also on track to pay for them selves but I swapped out for dolphins so now they are in Barrett’s freezer. If you are trying to get started in high trigger tanks on a more modest budget I still believe Dark Knights represent a good ‘bang for the buck’.

EDIT: 4/5/10
It appears Gaia has nerfed glow times to about half as often as before. No idea yet if this is permanent.

Also, for dolphins in particular, at last weekend's Sakura-Con Gaia Panel during the Q&A session I asked DJ Helsing about nerfing the dolphins. He said they are planning to nerf them but not sure when. They will be nerfed because 'things are out of balance and they need to be balanced'. Or words close to that. That sounds a lot like the excuse they gave when they nerfed the watermeat before introducing the dolphins.

EDIT: 9/21/11 The above is way out of date. Dolphins did not get nerfed but did go away, prices went to the moon, dolphins returned to Phin Phang. The glow nerf went away but the change in owner / player tank ratio came about and the 1/4 drop rate in BG. Dolphins are still a good fish but the amounts have changed a bit


Both of those things will affect the numbers above. Currently my dolphin tanks that were producing 110 to 115k per day are averaging about 75k per day. No idea where it will go from there.

EDIT: 4/22/10
Okay, so as most of you know Gaia restored the glow times a few days ago. My daily tank gold is back up but not as high as it was. I am not sure if this is seasonal (less people on line due to better weather / other activities) or if Gaia as done a more subtle nerf. I just averaged my tanks for the past 8 days.
Main three tanks 110k/day.
Secondary three tanks 83k/day
So a bit less but still an acceptable ROI that lets me replace my dolphins and buy some other stuff.



If you are just starting out and do not already have high tank exposure I advise against mini-monsters unless you do not care if they pay off. The reason is because they are so short lived they will probably die off before you get your tank exposure up. In my main tanks I could fill them with lawnsharks and they would pay for themselves during their four week life span. If I had done that in the beginning I would have been out a lot of gold.

MY RECOMMENDATIONS:
Dolphins if you can afford them. No surprise there if you read the rest of this post. They live a decent amount of time, drop a lot of gold and all glow at once.
EDIT: 5/11/10 Okay, sorry but as you probably know Dolphins are removed from Phin Phang. At this point I'm not sure what I recommend. LOL! Gwees? It sounds like Gaia is releasing some more fish soon so wait and see. smile
Dark Knight fish if you are on a more modest budget. They do not all glow at once but are still high trigger, drop a reasonable amount of gold, live longer than many fish and are much more affordable than dolphins.

Even though they have dropped in popularity I still think Watermeats are a good fish if you can get a decent buy on them. They live longer than dolphins, drop blue gold and because of their ‘fall from grace’ the LMP on marketplace has dropped. If they would all glow at once they would probably be more popular than dolphins or watermeats.
EDIT 9/21/11: These days I think a good mid-level tank would be Memphis Mermaids. Reasonable price on MP, live for 40 weeks, fairly decent gold drop and glow rate.

What ever you decide on, plan your game through the NEXT tank of fish as well. Use the gold you are generating to keep buying replacement fish so when the current ones die you are not left out in the cold. Many booty grab threads will ask you to delete your post if your high trigger tank is suddenly empty or full of crappy starter fish because you didn’t plan ahead.

I think that covers the basics and gives you some food for thought. Feel free to add your opinion or ask questions. I am hardly the last word on fish tanks. I am just sharing some information that might be helpful to others.

Good luck! smile

David,
Very good post I learned a lot even though we have talked about this. Maybe reading it makes more sense to me, Any way Thank you...

Very informative...thanks!

Sure, it's okay to ask here.
Dark Knight fish do not all glow at once. Only a few fish and most mini-monsters all glow during every game. I would consider Dark Knights a medium to medium-high trigger fish.

Whether or not your DK tank was a good purchase may depend on what you paid for them. Current LMP is 90k.

Back before my dolphins I had a tank full of DK fish. I could not afford dolphins (actually, watermeats back then) so I researched other fish and found dark knights to be a good compromise between cost and their specs. At the time though I think I paid around 30 to 40k each.

The dark knights are currently in my freezer since I bought my dolphins. While they were in my tank though I was tracking their gold production and they were on track for paying for themselves and turning a modest profit. That was before I was posted in nearly as many booty grab threads as I am now.

I do not see Dark Knights in your tank now. I gather they are either still in your inventory or in Barrett's freezer. If you have already put them in your tank you may as well try to get as much gold out of them as you can.

I am honestly not sure what fish to tell you is currently the best investment for booty grab fish. As I type this you could purchase a tank of dolphins on MP for an average of 636k. A very well exposed tank of dolphins can produce a bit over 700k for each dolphin during their 4 month life span. So dolphins are still a 'buy' barely but probably not for long.

The specs on Gwees make them a pretty good replacement for the dolphin in terms of fish still for sale in the store. They are bit more laggy due to all yellow gold but they are high trigger and give pretty good pay out. Unfortunately those facts have also driven their price way up in MP.

I have not heard any more about the three additional fish Gaia was supposedly going to introduce. Not the recent three with Zoey; I mean three more after that. However I have not seen anything directly from Gaia about that. I read a post by another user who had supposedly seen them in a test tank.

My expectation is Gaia will introduce a fish that is decent as a booty grab fish but does not dump as much gold as the dolphins. That is just a guess though; I have no information on that.

I am personally taking a 'wait and see' approach but I have the luxury of having backup dolphins so I'm not in a hurry to purchase new fish.

Well, it is an awkward time to know what fish to invest in for booty grab gold. I know some who are hoarding gwees because of their specs and the removal of the dolphins.

I do recommend that what ever you do it is a full tank. I prefer pure tanks but that's just opinion. What ever you put together it needs to be a full tank of high trigger (or at least good trigger) fish or you won't get people playing your games and thus won't get the return on your investment. If you can't buy them all at once it can be tough to wait but if you put in just a few they will die off while you are trying to get the gold for the rest and you will be frustrated wondering why your tank is not making much gold or getting invites. 17 dolphins (or other HT fish) is usually a guaranteed invite to a forming BG thread. 7 dolphins is not.

Oh this is good to know, was completely clueless till now. Thanks.