Thank you people!

[Spenelli]

Before I joined this guild I got 1 play a day. I got 5 plays yesterday.

Yay!

My tank isn't even great with all those lite fish in there. But hopefully Friday when I get paid I will get more (REAL) watermeats.

I just can't see myself paying 2 billion gold in the MP when in the lifetime of my tank I've only made 545,024. xD

Joining this guild was one of the best things I did on Gaia! Now people are actually playing my tank and bumping my thread. Also there are so many glowing tanks here. <3  

[David2074]

Spenelli

Before I joined this guild I got 1 play a day. I got 5 plays yesterday.

Yay!

My tank isn't even great with all those lite fish in there. But hopefully Friday when I get paid I will get more (REAL) watermeats.

I just can't see myself paying 2 billion gold in the MP when in the lifetime of my tank I've only made 545,024. xD

Joining this guild was one of the best things I did on Gaia! Now people are actually playing my tank and bumping my thread. Also there are so many glowing tanks here. <3

TLDR: In the current Gaian economy you should only own a tank because you want it for personal / aesthetic reasons. You should not own them for the purpose of trying to make gold.

If your intent is to earn gold from your tank by purchasing fish on MP and then collecting profit from booty grab gold paid by players - I do not believe that is physically possible at today's market prices. I've had my fish frozen for a couple of years now so I don't have current play numbers. Possibly someone else here has a different opinion but personally I don't see how it is possible for the numbers to work out.

I used to run six full dolphin tanks.
My tanks were posted in about 400 booty grab threads and guilds. Some of those faded over time as they always do but my point is my tanks were well represented and saw a lot of maxed out games.

From experience I know that back then a dolphin would gross me a max of roughly 750k over its four month life span.
Back then a dolphin on MP would cost me an average of say about 400k.
I've purchased them for as low as 225K and in a very few instances paid about 600k.
Current pricing on MP for dolphins:
Average Buy Price: 11,963,700,000 gold

There is simply no way a dolphin will ever, EVER make anything even remotely close to that even in a well exposed tank. You would be losing nearly 12 Billion gold per dolphin (x 17 dolphins in the tank) over the four month life span.
I am not personally willing to pay out over 50 Billion gold per month (average) just so other people can play my tank.

I assume the numbers would be similar with other high trigger fish since prices on all have skyrocketed with everything else. Dolphins are just the ones I have a lot of data on.

Real numbers would probably be even worse because from what I understand the number of BG threads and players has decreased significantly. The recent increase in the cap on daily gold is almost an insult because it does not change what a player or tank owner gets PER GAME. Most players are not willing to spend umpteen hours a day playing just booty grab to try to reach the new cap. The payout has not kept up with the rest of the site.

The people running this guild have worked hard to promote booty grab and have had a lot of contests with some pretty awesome prizes and such. I applaud their efforts and I'm not trying to sound bitter or angry or anything. But they are fighting an uphill battle until if / when Gaia ever decides to make tanks and booty grab more balanced with the rest of the current Gaia economy. But if you have limited disposable income (your reference to waiting for payday) I don't want you to spend a lot of real money on fish with the expectation they will make you a lot of gold in your tank.

Ironically, you'd make far more gold per fish by purchasing them from the fish store and selling them on marketplace. I don't buy gold generators so I don't know how that compares. I do know the current 10 BILLION + gold I could get from selling one dolphin on MP would be more than the combined total of the literally hundreds of dolphins that have lived and died in my tanks.  

[Spenelli]

David2074

Well, I was actually just a bit behind on money cause me and my bf had been out of work so long. I feel like if I have less than $300 I'm broke. xD We're finally doing well again. I'm super lucky because I only have one bill a month. xD We live with his mom, and it's a situation where she actually wants us here. I get tips at work from a tip jar, so we split it. I end up with $5 or more every day just extra. My tips are mine to do what I want with, and I want gaia cash! Haha. You are right about tanks not being a way to make money. I do look at it now like I just like watermeats. They are adorable and I love them. Expensive pixels, haha. What I like about meats though is their crazy life span. They live over 6 months. But still... that means they cost me $85 a year. It is stupid of me, but oh well. xD I work for my money so might as well have some fun with it. I would make a lot more selling them than keeping them, haha. I think Aquariums have been neglected a long time, but it looks like we finally got through to them. They say they are working on increasing the amount per game, as well as adding more fish. Lets hope they come through.  

[shamantra]

wow David! No loss of words for you xp  

[David2074]

Spenelli

David2074

Well, I was actually just a bit behind on money cause me and my bf had been out of work so long. I feel like if I have less than $300 I'm broke. xD We're finally doing well again. I'm super lucky because I only have one bill a month. xD We live with his mom, and it's a situation where she actually wants us here. I get tips at work from a tip jar, so we split it. I end up with $5 or more every day just extra. My tips are mine to do what I want with, and I want gaia cash! Haha. You are right about tanks not being a way to make money. I do look at it now like I just like watermeats. They are adorable and I love them. Expensive pixels, haha. What I like about meats though is their crazy life span. They live over 6 months. But still... that means they cost me $85 a year. It is stupid of me, but oh well. xD I work for my money so might as well have some fun with it. I would make a lot more selling them than keeping them, haha. I think Aquariums have been neglected a long time, but it looks like we finally got through to them. They say they are working on increasing the amount per game, as well as adding more fish. Lets hope they come through.

It sounds like you have the right frame of mind about it.
If it is disposable income and you get enjoyment out of it then it's not much different than spending the money on a movie ticket or something.

I probably blah-blahed about it too much because I've seen people disappointed due to unrealistic expectations. Or in one case (this is going back quite a while) a friend in another country was happy she had finally saved up enough cash for a tank full of meats, bought them, and then three for four days after she put them in the tank is when Gaia severely nerfed watermeats. Perhaps you know but meats used to all glow at once the way dolphins and airsharks do. I think they also used to pay out more but not sure. I mean, game payouts overall got nerfed but I'm trying to remember if watermeat payout specifically got nerfed along with the glow nerf.

And thanks for the comment about Gaia working on increasing per game payout. I was not aware of that. Because of your comment I went and found it in the Asked the Staff archives. It will be interesting to see if the changes are significant enough to be worthwhile. Still, it's better than the dead silence we have been getting for a long time now.  

[Spenelli]

David2074

Yes, if I was a "normal" person I would be spending money on movies, going to the bar, etc. That's how I explain my ridiculous Gaia cash purchases to people. xD Besides food/drinks and my cell phone I really don't spend money on anything besides Gaia. Oh and I pay $5 a month for perks on my Minecraft server. I spend my life in the virtual world. xD

I was reading that watermeats payout has been decreased as well. So less glow, and you get less from the ones that do. But I visit my tank everyday so I get 5-9 glowing usually. I'm on here a lot so they glow pretty often.

And yeah, in the first Ask The Staff they really seemed to ignore all the Aquarium questions. They finally got sick of us enough to say they'd do something. xD Now just to hope they really do. I still want to address the lag issue. When there are a few tanks on one page, my PC freezes. My PC is not even a year old and it was expensive. It's a gaming PC. But it can't handle a few tanks. I searched for the pre-ATS thread and there isn't one. I never have Monday off so that's my only hope. They might not even do it tomorrow.  

[David2074]

Spenelli

David2074

Yes, if I was a "normal" person I would be spending money on movies, going to the bar, etc. That's how I explain my ridiculous Gaia cash purchases to people. xD Besides food/drinks and my cell phone I really don't spend money on anything besides Gaia. Oh and I pay $5 a month for perks on my Minecraft server. I spend my life in the virtual world. xD

I was reading that watermeats payout has been decreased as well. So less glow, and you get less from the ones that do. But I visit my tank everyday so I get 5-9 glowing usually. I'm on here a lot so they glow pretty often.

And yeah, in the first Ask The Staff they really seemed to ignore all the Aquarium questions. They finally got sick of us enough to say they'd do something. xD Now just to hope they really do. I still want to address the lag issue. When there are a few tanks on one page, my PC freezes. My PC is not even a year old and it was expensive. It's a gaming PC. But it can't handle a few tanks. I searched for the pre-ATS thread and there isn't one. I never have Monday off so that's my only hope. They might not even do it tomorrow.

I don't think I've ever bothered to post in ATA. Maybe once - not sure.
What I tended to see in the past was:

1. If it was an issue I cared about someone else (or several of them) was already asking about it. Because usually I only care about major issues not whether I can have a recolor of some obscure item.

2. If the question I cared about was uncomfortable for them to answer then they usually would not answer it anyway or they would give some bullshit feel good looking into it type of answer.

3. To get to what I consider the "meat" of an ATA thread you have to wade through tons of fluffly bullshit posts about "What is your favorite cookie" and "Do you have a cat?" and other stuff that is a waste of time. And I resent these questions all the more because it helps staff avoid the item #2 type questions. They answer the fluffy fun stuff and then say, "Oops! We're out of time! See you next week!"
(to be fair - I've seen a bit less fluff in the new ask the staff threads.)

So because of that I just wait and read it later in - what used to be the "Asked the Admin" thread but has now been moved to the "Asked the Staff" guild.
BTW - that guild is here if you are interested. I find it handy if you were not at the ATA (ATS) thread. Saves reading a lot of posts to be able to just read the stuff the staff actually responded to.
http://www.gaiaonline.com/guilds-home/asked-the-staff-answer-archive/g.427223/

With the move to a guild he has also included a listing by subject which is a kind of nice option. So for example the stuff on Aquariums is here -
http://www.gaiaonline.com/guilds/viewtopic.php?t=24518309  

[Spenelli]

David2074

Nice, thank you!! :3

Yeah, someone had asked, "What did you have for lunch?" And they actually answered. stare

I wish people wouldn't waste our time with that kind of stuff.