Long story short, I figured out the performance and stability problems. I'm running in windowed mode now with the title bar hidden and black along with the background so it's nearly indistinguishable from full screen and running at 60fps solid. Not bad for a 2-watt chip. Since the aquarium was always ahead of it's time, it still looks killer even though it's super lightweight.
Here's a video.
If anyone's curious, even though it's literally a completely functional Win10 PC, this
entire thing could be duplicated for about $250.
