THE SPIKEFISH THREAT
The Spikefish is the reef's one predator — a red, spined intruder that swims in from off-screen to attack your bloodlines. It's the game's tension: relaxing tank, sudden danger, a quick save.
The telegraph
An attack is announced before it lands. A warning flashes at the entry edge and depth for ~1.4 seconds — a looming aquatic shadow with red eyes and a ripple ring — and the music swells to the threat bed. Then the Spikefish enters from that exact spot, nose first, from fully outside the tank.
What it does
- It prowls toward the nearest vulnerable fish, intercepting by predicting the prey's path.
- On contact it kills fish up to Koi Dragon (tier 6) outright.
- The Anglerfish (7) is too big to kill — it devolves to a Koi Dragon and the spike dies with it.
- The Manta Ray (8) duels: struck head-on (in the Manta's forward cone) the Manta wins and kills the spike; struck from the side or behind, the Manta devolves and the spike dies.
- The Leviathan (9) and Cosmic Whale are immune.
Beating it — net it
Tap the Spikefish to net it before it reaches your fish. Netting pays a pearl bounty and removes the threat. HP scales with progress: under 250 lifetime drops it's a one-hit net (easy onboarding); after that some spawn with 2 or 3 HP. A net hit flashes the spike white and mini-stuns it in place, with knockback and a "hit! N left" callout.
Pacing
Spikefish appear on an interval that's calmer for the first ~3 minutes (≈31–41s between) and normal after (≈21–31s), and only when the tank has enough fish and fewer than two spikes are already present. The first-ever Spikefish pauses the game with a short tutorial before it spawns.
Audio note
The threat bed and the arrival theme are layered during a spike, then cleanly faded back to the ambient bed when it dies or is netted. The music holds through the whole telegraph so it never stutters. See the Audio Bible.