'Fishtank Live' Week One Recap: What's Happened On Sam Hyde's Reality Show So Far

Week one of Sam Hyde's ambitious 24/7 livestreamed reality show Fishtank Live has come to a close and week two of the six-week-long event has officially begun. In just one week, the show, which films its contestants all day and night and allows viewers to mess with them by donating to the stream, has fostered a lively online fandom, resulting in a few notable favorite fish. We even saw one fish get ejected from the tank before the first official elimination challenge.

Here's a quick recap of everything that happened during the first week of Fishtank Live.

What Has Happened On Fishtank So Far?

Fishtank started streaming on Fishtank.live on April 18th. On the first day, the contestants (Vance, Simmons, Jonathan, Mauro, Damiel, Josie, Sylvia and Violetta) slowly arrived the house and introduced themselves to each other. They played Mouse Trap, Josie found a toy that sings "Witch Doctor" and became a fan favorite after spinning in a chair and everyone ate pizza together.

Early the next morning around 1:00 AM, Hyde, playing the character Jason Goldstriker, showed up at the house and gave the fish their first challenge: pick a pile of mixed jasmine and basmati rice, count the jasmine rice only and report your number, with the most correct fish winning $1,000. Sylvia won the contest and Goldstriker assigned them a new task: write an essay.

They were also told that a ghost called "the entity" lives in the house.

The fish ended up reading those essays at the end of day two and Josie's essay won. While he was there, Goldstriker also explained the concept of "fish bucks," which are rewarded to the fish when they win various challenges. Each fish buck is worth $500 and the fish can cash them out once they've completed their stay at the house, as long as they don't leave by their own volition.

On the third day, the text-to-speech function was introduced, which allows viewers to send live messages to the house. Jonathan wasn't a big fan of the messages and they were temporarily disabled. Vance also told the house he was the sun baby in Teletubbies, which is a lie.
That night the streaming site went down after production encountered a payment issue with their server. A temporary stream was put up on YouTube so people could continue to watch the show.

The fish were also given a new challenge. They were put into teams, with Damiel, Jonathan, Josie and Mauro on one and Sylvia, Violetta, Vance and Simmons on the other. The teams would come up with improv sketches and perform them on a later day.

Goldstriker showed up at the house the next day and told them that the stream was down, then proceeded to practice martial arts with them. Simmons started doing a form of tai chi sparring with anyone else interested and Jonathan and Damiel got into a light argument about the contents of a bottle in the kitchen. It was vinegar.

On the fifth day, Jet arrived at the house and told the fish that two people were given "secret missions." If the other fish could guess who the impostor fish were, they could win fish bucks, but if they couldn't and the imposters completed their missions, then they would win. Nobody guessed the imposters right and the identities of the imposters were kept a secret.

Later that day the fishtank purportedly got swatted and the fish had to evacuate. Jet posted a photo of them all together to show that they were safe.

The fish performed their sketches the next night and Damiel, Jonathan, Josie and Mauro. Violetta got a little upset about losing and Goldstriker comforted her and gave her encouragement. The next day, Damiel was seen blatantly using his phone and purportedly wanted to fight Jonathan.

Damiel even posted a selfie from the fishtank bathroom to Twitter. He was escorted out of the house early. Some of the fish wanted the elimination challenge to be canceled because they were already down a fish, but Goldstriker assured them it was still happening.

While all of this happened, viewers on Twitter were excitedly discussing the show, creating memes and fan art about it and picking favorites. Some people have connected with Jonathan for his love of Andrew Tate, while others are completely repulsed by it. Many have chosen Josie as their favorite and turned things like her spinning in a chair and playing with the "Witch Doctor" toy into memes.

A lot of people believed that Damiel was a plant by the producers, but this still isn't 100% clear. They've also found the fish's social media accounts and some are calling Simmons out for some strange posts and claims he's made in the past. Things are only getting crazier going into week two, so keep an eye on the stream.

For the full details on Fishtank Live, be sure to check out our entry on the meme here for even more information.