Getting started

The first time you open the game there's a short tutorial that walks you through hatching a fish and feeding it. You can rerun it any time from the title screen.

You start with 250 coins. Your first 3 fish are a bargain at 25 each, so grab all three. After that a new classic Sacabambaspis costs 300, and the special colors in the shop run from 1,500 to 4,000. The fish guide lists them all.

Every fish gets a random name like Shy Sacabambaspis or Tired Sacabambaspis. You can rename them. We can't stop you. We can only warn you that it makes the whole thing a lot more emotional.

Making coins

There are three ways to earn.

Tap the drops. While the tank is open, a coin or gem drops in every 5 to 10 seconds. Coins are worth 5. Red gems are 10, blue gems 25, and green gems 50. They vanish after about 30 seconds, so don't wander off.
Empty the tip jar. The tip jar fills up while you're away, roughly a coin a second, until it hits its limit. Come back, hit Collect, done.
Sell grown fish. This is the big one, and it's covered below.

Feeding and health

Tap a fish to open it up. You'll see three bars: health, hunger, and affection (the shop calls it friendship).

Hunger drains constantly, including when the game is closed. As long as there's food in the belly, health slowly heals. Once hunger hits empty, health starts dropping instead, and when health is gone, so is the fish.

Buying food from the fish's screen drops it straight into the tank. Plain fish food is 5 coins and is all you really need to keep a fish alive. Fruit and veggies cost more but also heal and build friendship. The food chart has every number.

Growing up

Fish age in real time. A fish is a baby for its first 24 hours, a teen until 48, an adult until 72, and old after that. Each stage has more max health than the last, so an older fish can survive a longer stretch without food. Babies are the fragile ones.

Friendship and selling

Open the list view from the tank to see every fish with its stats, age and a sell button. The game asks you to confirm before it sells, so no accidental goodbyes.

The price is all about friendship. A fish with zero friendship sells for 25. A fish with a completely full friendship bar sells for about 2,525. Everything in between scales evenly. So if you want money, feed the good stuff. Chili, lemon, grapes and bananas are the fastest ways to fill that bar.

The Jawless Fishtank shop, showing fish for sale and food with health, hunger and friendship stats

If a fish dies

It happens. A dead fish stays in your list, and you've got two choices: pay 550 to revive it, or sell it for 20. Reviving is worth it if it had a lot of friendship built up, since that's what makes it valuable.