[1][2] The theory proposes that dark matter and dark energy are not separate physical phenomena, nor do they have separate origins, but that they are strongly linked together and can be considered as two facets of a single fluid.
The effect is always present but only becomes noticeable in the presence of a very large mass such as a galaxy.
[5] On the other hand, in places where there is relatively little matter, as in the voids between galactic superclusters, this hypothesis predicts that the dark fluid relaxes and acquires a negative pressure.
Indeed, special cases of various other gravitational theories are reproduced by dark fluid, e.g. inflation, quintessence, k-essence, f(R), Generalized Einstein-Aether f(K), MOND, TeVeS, BSTV, etc.
A formalized fluid mechanical approach, like the generalized Chaplygin gas model, would be an ideal method for modeling dark fluid, but it currently requires too many observational data points for the computations to be feasible, and not enough data points are available to cosmologists.