Aquafarming

The Retired Aquafarmer brings fish farming to the playable demo in the October 19, 2026 update. Start with tilapia, keep their tank circulating, and choose whether to grow your stock or harvest it. The developer describes this as a slower-paced, lower-maintenance alternative to rat ranching.

Start through Wild’s Network

Buy Water Trader first, then Aquaculture for a base 400 credits. Aquaculture II costs a base 1,200 after Aquaculture. The first upgrade immediately supplies a starter kit and opens a weekly retired aquafarmer visit; the second adds larger fish to those visits and immediately gives two young eels. These are configured unlock costs, before any applicable discount, not fish sale prices.

Aquaculture upgrades	Base credits	Requires	Effect
Aquaculture	400	Water Trader	Weekly equipment/roe supplier and an immediate starter kit.
Aquaculture II	1200	Aquaculture	Larger fish join the supplier; receive two young eels immediately.

Current compiled network: 36 services, 22 available in the demo.

Keep the tank supplied

Fit the RAS water reservoir and fill it in place. Its capacity is 12,000 ml; once installed it stays with the system. Keep an energy cell and filters supplied, and check the current stock’s total water requirement as fish grow. The grid begins at 8 × 4 and reaches 12 × 8 after four width and four height upgrades. In the power formula below, W and H are the completed width/height upgrades and E is power-efficiency upgrades (up to 12). Each size upgrade adds one grid cell along its axis; the required material recipe still needs checking in your game.

RAS reference	Effect
Starting grid	8 × 4
Maximum grid	12 × 8
Water reservoir	12000 ml
Power (kJ/night)	max(1, 5 + 2W + 3H − 2E)

Choose a fish for your goal

The three tilapia varieties are omnivores and can breed. Eels, electric eels and sturgeons are carnivores and do not breed in captivity. Industrial Fish Feed is described for omnivores and herbivores; check the diet instead of assuming one feed works for every fish. Gutter Tilapia tolerates waste and removes some contaminants, but this does not certify the reservoir as drinking water. Graft Tilapia supplies medical resources and is more sensitive to waste.

Fish	Diet	Breeds in captivity	Adult growth age	Adult water need	Role
Tilapia	Omnivore	Yes	8	750 ml	Breeding and fish meat.
Gutter Tilapia	Omnivore	Yes	10	750 ml	Tolerates waste, cleans some contaminants and resists pellet penalties.
Graft Tilapia	Omnivore	Yes	8	750 ml	Medical products; more sensitive to waste.
Eel	Carnivore	No	16	1200 ml	Luxury fillets; raise only.
Electric Eel	Carnivore	No	16	1200 ml	Battery charging from adolescence; starvation stops output.
Sturgeon	Carnivore	No	22	3000 ml	Caviar and roe; surgery costs health.

These are configured growth-age thresholds, not a promise of that many nights. Diet, hunger, health and room can delay growth. Roe/fry water is for the whole clutch; later water is per fish. Stage weight is a configured baseline, not a measurement of the fish’s current mass.

Follow growth and breeding

Tilapia can lay and fertilize roe, hatch into fry, then become individual fish. New tilapia clutches are configured with six eggs/fry; that is not a survival guarantee. The tables show the growth-age counter and configured weight/water for each stage. Food, hunger, health and room affect the process, so an adult-age threshold is not a guaranteed number of nights. Rat genetics and cage ratios do not describe this system.

Tilapia

Stage	Growth age	Configured stage weight (g)	Water (ml)
Roe	0	0	100
Fry	1	0	100
Juvenile	3	50	100
Adolescent	5	200	350
Adult	8	450	750
Elder	13	600	1000

Gutter Tilapia

Stage	Growth age	Configured stage weight (g)	Water (ml)
Roe	0	0	100
Fry	1	0	100
Juvenile	3	50	100
Adolescent	6	200	350
Adult	10	450	750
Elder	16	600	1000

Graft Tilapia

Stage	Growth age	Configured stage weight (g)	Water (ml)
Roe	0	0	100
Fry	1	0	100
Juvenile	3	50	100
Adolescent	5	200	350
Adult	8	450	750
Elder	13	600	1000

Eel

Stage	Growth age	Configured stage weight (g)	Water (ml)
Juvenile	0	150	200
Adolescent	8	600	600
Adult	16	1400	1200
Elder	30	2400	2000

Electric Eel

Stage	Growth age	Configured stage weight (g)	Water (ml)
Juvenile	0	150	200
Adolescent	8	600	600
Adult	16	1400	1200
Elder	30	2400	2000

Sturgeon

Stage	Growth age	Configured stage weight (g)	Water (ml)
Juvenile	0	500	500
Adolescent	10	1500	1500
Adult	22	3500	3000
Elder	40	5000	4000

These are configured growth-age thresholds, not a promise of that many nights. Diet, hunger, health and room can delay growth. Roe/fry water is for the whole clutch; later water is per fish. Stage weight is a configured baseline, not a measurement of the fish’s current mass.

Harvest with the health and jar history in view

Use a knife for meat and related butchery products. Surgery Tools can remove eggs from a living sturgeon, but the health cost rises as egg fullness falls: 20% of its 150 maximum health at full eggs (30 health), up to 50% (75 health) at zero fullness. Egg growth requires at least 90% health (135). Surgery is refused unless the fish is alive, at least one jar is harvestable, and current health is strictly greater than the calculated cost. The zero-fullness endpoint is a formula bound; an empty fish cannot be harvested.

The surgical jar counter is per fish: the first 10 jars are caviar; the next six alternate caviar and ordinary sturgeon roe; later jars are ordinary roe. This is a cumulative product sequence, not 10 caviar jars on every harvest. Jar quantity depends on the eggs actually present. Keep the fish’s health, egg readout and previous harvests in view before repeating surgery.

Electric eels and reference limits

Electric eels begin charging the RAS battery and adjacent batteries at the adolescent stage. Their configured output is 1 / 2 / 3 kJ per night at adolescent / adult / elder; starvation stops output. Account for feeding and tank demand before treating that as spare power.

The current reference tables use verified Windows Steam demo build26017150, whose compiled version label is VERSION 050rev5-L. The older general item/network catalogs still carry their demo 049-Rev3-L source. The announcement’s GIFs show full-release UI unavailable in the demo. Actual trade offers, tank upgrade materials, measured growth/harvest outcomes, tool consumption and mod/save compatibility remain unverified.

Real-Time Shop 1.0.0 lists support for build 25382790 / 049-Rev 5-L. The Windows release check reports that its binary-fingerprint guard disables the mod on updated demo build 26017150. The earlier supported build is not Aquafarmer compatibility evidence.

Sources

Steam Aquafarmer announcement, 2026-10-19 12:15:07 UTC. Verified static extraction: Steam demo26017150; native initializer/helper hashes and game-localization records. Existing official master cover; named fish/item sprites decoded from the matching snapshot. No game executable, raw Unity bundle or dump is published.