Save the Little Fish

Saving the world’s tropical fish, one tank at a time.

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Multiple Tank Syndrome

A card game for fish keepers. Hold secret goals, stock your tanks, survive the diseases and disasters, and catch the other player’s mistakes. The first to meet a goal wins.

How to play
  1. Start. You begin with nothing. Choose your first tank from 3, then your first secret goal from 3. A tank holds its gallons in inches of fish.
  2. Goals. Meet any of your goals in any one of your tanks and you win. Later you can choose more tanks and goals (up to 3 of each), each from 3 cards.
  3. Your turn: do one thing. Draw a card (click the deck) · net a fish · give the fish in your net to the computer · choose another tank · choose another goal · visit the store (once a local fish store opens near you).
  4. Free, any time on your turn, even after you draw: set each tank’s heater (up to 2°C a turn), pH (up to 0.5 a turn: change pH slowly!) and flow, and move fish between your tanks (drag a fish onto another tank).
  5. Flow. Each tank is calm, gentle or strong. A fish in the wrong flow tires itself out: one step off and it dies after 4 turns, two steps off (a rapids pleco in calm water) after 2. Its card counts down.
  6. Fish you draw must go into one of your tanks: drag the card onto a tank, or click the card and then the tank. If none of your tanks has room, the computer may take it, and the other way round.
  7. Tank mates. Predators eat anything small enough to swallow, right away. Aggressive, territorial and semi-aggressive fish stay calm until the tank gets crowded, then start killing smaller fish. Fin nippers may nip long fins whenever the tank changes; a second nip kills.
  8. Call it out. A fish in the wrong temperature or pH doesn’t die until someone notices. On your turn, press Call it out under any of the computer’s fish you think is in the wrong water. If you’re right, you can take it into one of your own tanks, or let it die. If you’re wrong, your turn is over. The computer looks at yours too. A quarantine tank is set to suit whoever is in it, so nothing there can be called out.
  9. Trade-in. Take two of your fish back to the store for the next fish in the pile (that’s your action). Only fish that have lived with you since before this turn can be traded, so keep an unwanted fish alive for a round, then trade it.
  10. Store credit is a product card: spend it to swap a fish you just drew for the next fish in the pile.
  11. Giving fish away takes two turns: net it, then give it into the computer’s tank of your choice. A Rehome card does it in one.
  12. Plants go in a tank’s 3 plant spots, not its inches, and only work in their temperature range (in the wrong water they melt). Fast growers fight ammonia and algae, tall plants shelter calm-water fish from the current, floating plants shelter top swimmers, hardy plants calm bullies, moss hides tiny fish from predators, and almond leaves let pH change twice as fast. Goldfish, oscars and wood-eating plecos destroy plants.
  13. Products stay in your hand and save you from the problem they’re for. A Medicine basket cures any disease once.
  14. Problems. Diseases hit the tank you last put a fish in, and the water matters: ammonia is deadliest warm and hard, columnaris loves warm water, and hot water burns out ich. A cold night or a city power failure hits every tank, for both players.
  15. Winning. When someone meets a goal, the other player gets a last look at that tank to call out mistakes. If the goal still stands, it’s a win.

Card values are estimates we’re still checking, so treat this as a prototype.