Reefback eggs spawning in Alien Containment! (never mind, it's the Spadefish, evidently those have eggs)

[Fishkeeper]

I have an Alien Containment, 3 stories, containing a few Reginalds, some Bladderfish, some Spadefish, and a baby Sand Shark. Twice now, I've found a Reefback egg in there that I didn't put in there.
Is this a known thing? Something to do with the coral I planted? I have one of the purple fans and one of the green-and-purple wiggly tendril things, both from the Safe Shallows area.

[Amanoob105]

Reefback eggs were never added to the game (not counting getting them with commands). They did however use the same moddel, just much, much smaller for spadefish eggs.

You can find the same eggs in some of the caves around the map, especially the caves in the red grass biome.
Letting the eggs hatch will pop out more spadefish. And two or more spadefish will, in turn, make more of the same eggs.

[Fishkeeper]

Oh, that explains it! I saw a picture of this egg with the description "incredibly, reefbacks hatch from these" and I thought it made sense that they were that small, given the "incredibly" part. Good to know.
Odd that none of the other edible fish (that I'm aware of) hatch from eggs. Is there a given reason for that, or is that just how it is?

Also, how big do large fauna tend to get in the Alien Containment? Do they get so big they're really cramped and sad-looking, or do they stay tiny? I hatched a Sand Shark and it's teeny right now, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do if it starts getting too big. I like my fictional specimens in proper environments.

[Amanoob105]

Originally posted by Fishkeeper:

Oh, that explains it! I saw a picture of this egg with the description "incredibly, reefbacks hatch from these" and I thought it made sense that they were that small, given the "incredibly" part. Good to know.
Odd that none of the other edible fish (that I'm aware of) hatch from eggs. Is there a given reason for that, or is that just how it is?

Also, how big do large fauna tend to get in the Alien Containment? Do they get so big they're really cramped and sad-looking, or do they stay tiny? I hatched a Sand Shark and it's teeny right now, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do if it starts getting too big. I like my fictional specimens in proper environments.

They wanted at one point to make all the fish of the game come from eggs, but at some point just called a halt to that effort. I would guess because they didn't want their game to spend forever in EA and they did have a LOT of fish in the game by that point.

Not to mention it would be a little silly to grow your own leviathan sized fish (though it would have been fun). As such, between the two I would, again, guess they just liked the egg moddel enough that they didn't want to get rid of it altogether and slotted it in where ever they could. Lucky spadefish.

As to size. Not counting any of the ones you can eat which will grow to their full size and then breed to the max number they can. The larger ones will always grow to a point that is smaller then the wild ones out in the sea, and then breed (or race each other to breed) to the limit the tank allows.
If you release them into the open water they will start to grow back to full size.

At which point some people find them to be wonderful happy neighbours and other people find they immediately try to take a bite out of you (not counting the cuddlefish). Either way once released they can no longer be picked back up.

If you really want to have fun with them, find a fish that has green lumps on it and put it in. Wait a day and scan.
Then find a peeper that is trailing gold flakes and put that in the mix. Wait a day and scan.