Tropical Fish

Tropical Fish are common bucketable aquatic passive mobs found in oceans, mangrove swamps and lush caves. There are 2,700 naturally occurring variants of tropical fish of different colors and shapes with unique names.

Spawning[]

In Java Edition, random varieties of tropical fish spawn in groups of 8 in lukewarm or warm oceans (as well as their deep variants) at Y-level 50 to 63, and in lush caves at any Y-level. They are subject to fish spawning requirements.

In Bedrock Edition, tropical fish spawn underwater at 12-32 blocks away from the player. Tropical fish spawn only in warm, lukewarm, deep lukewarm ocean biomes and lush caves, in groups of 3-5 for the same preset pattern, and in groups of 1-3 for a random pattern. In addition, tropical fish in warm, lukewarm ocean and deep variants can only spawn at Y levels between 50 and 64 and must be on the surface (i.e., there must not be a spawnable block above the spawn location with a non-solid block on top). Tropical fish in lush caves can spawn on any Y levels but require underground.

Drops[]

• 1 tropical fish, unaffected by Looting.^[1]
• 1 bone meal (5% chance) ‌^{[Java Edition only]}
• 1–2 bones (25% chance) ‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]}
• 1–3 when killed by a player or tamed wolf.

Behavior[]

Tropical fish tend to swim in schools of fish (a maximum of nine tropical fish per school). Tropical fish are also able to go against the water flow.

The player may collect a fish by using a water bucket on it, which gives the player a bucket of fish. Fish placed with buckets do not despawn naturally. When that fish bucket is used against a block, it empties the bucket, placing water with that fish swimming in it.

Weaknesses[]

Tropical fish cannot survive out of water. Outside of water, they flop around for a while until eventually they suffocate and die. In Bedrock Edition, they rotate when flipping. Fish cannot swim or breathe in cauldron water.^[2]

Fish have a weakness to weapons that have the Impaling enchantment, which also affects squid, turtles, guardians, elder guardians and dolphins.‌^{[Java Edition only]}

Varieties[]

Java Edition[]

When tropical fish spawn in the wild, 90% of the time they appear as one of the 22 varieties seen on the right, and the other 10% of the time their patterns, size, and colors are completely random, drawn from any of 2 shapes, 6 patterns, 15 base colors, and 15 pattern colors. The color black does not appear on any naturally-spawned tropical fish, since the eyes are usually hard to see.^[3] These result in 2,700 naturally-occurring combinations.

Tropical fish can be summoned with black as one or both of their colors, and/or without any visible pattern,^{[more information needed]} though even without the pattern they can still have a pattern color, causing a further 884 possible combinations, 480 of which look the same due to the missing pattern.

Bedrock Edition[]

Tropical fish do not have common varieties in Bedrock Edition. Instead, naturally spawned tropical fish have 2 spawn attempts, the first chooses one of the 21 preset variants, and the other will use randomly chosen patterns, sizes, shapes, and colors (except black) Tropical fish spawned from a spawn egg will use randomly chosen patterns, sizes, shapes, and colors (except black). By using commands, tropical fish may be spawned as one of the 21 preset variants.

Names[]

Tropical fish variants in buckets have names that are assigned based on their colors and type. In Bedrock Edition, the names are in the name of the bucket, giving names like "Bucket of Plum Blockfish", "Bucket of Sky-Orange Snooper", or "Bucket of Orange-Lime Dasher". In Java Edition, the type, and colors are displayed as item tooltips.

In Bedrock Edition, the following colors are renamed from their defaults when they refer to tropical fish. Parentheses indicate default name and color id - see § Entity data.

• Sky (Light Blue; 3)
• Rose (Pink; 6)
• Silver (Light Gray; 8)
• Teal (Cyan; 9)
• Plum (Purple; 10)

The base color is first, and the pattern color is next if it is different.

The fish type is determined according to the shape and pattern of the fish:

Flopper Glitter Betty Stripey Blockfish Clayfish

Kob Snooper Brinely Sunstreak[n 1] Dasher Spotty

Some varieties of tropical fish don't follow the normal naming system; instead, they reference real-life fish species. In Java Edition, these unique fish are limited to the 22 common varieties. In Bedrock Edition, there are 21 uniquely-named tropical fish, though they are not all the same as in Java Edition. These uniquely-named tropical fish aren't different from regular tropical fish in terms of design or behavior. Bedrock edition does not have the Yellowtail Parrotfish.

These varieties are:

Name	Type	Image
Anemone	Orange-Gray Stripey
Black Tang	Gray Flopper
Blue Tang‌[JE only]	Gray-Blue Flopper
Blue Dory‌[BE only]	Gray-Sky SunStreak
Butterflyfish‌[JE only] Butterfly Fish‌[BE only]	White-Gray Clayfish
Cichlid	Blue-Gray Sunstreak‌[JE only] Blue-Gray SunStreak‌[BE only]
Clownfish	Orange-White Kob
Cotton Candy Betta	Pink-Light Blue Spotty‌[JE only] Rose-Sky Spotty‌[BE only]
Dottyback	Purple-Yellow Blockfish‌[JE only] Plum-Yellow Blockfish‌[BE only]
Emperor Red Snapper	White-Red Clayfish
Goatfish	White-Yellow Spotty
Moorish Idol	White-Gray Glitter
Ornate Butterflyfish‌[JE only] Ornate Butterfly‌[BE only]	White-Orange Clayfish
Parrotfish	Cyan-Pink Dasher‌[JE only] Teal-Rose Dasher‌[BE only]
Queen Angelfish‌[JE only] Queen Angel Fish‌[BE only]	Lime-Light Blue Brinely‌[JE only] Lime-Sky Brinely‌[BE only]
Red Cichlid	Red-White Betty
Red Lipped Blenny	Gray-Red Snooper
Red Snapper	Red-White Blockfish
Threadfin	White-Yellow Flopper
Tomato Clownfish‌[JE only]	Red-White Kob
Tomato Clown‌[BE only]	Red-White SunStreak
Triggerfish	Gray-White Sunstreak‌[JE only] Gray-White SunStreak‌[BE only]
Yellowtail Parrotfish‌[JE only]	Cyan-Yellow Dasher‌[JE only]
Yellow Tang	Yellow Flopper

Sounds[]

Java Edition:
Tropical fish use the Friendly Creatures sound category for entity-dependent sound events.

Bedrock Edition:

Data values[]

ID[]

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

Entity data[]

Tropical fish have entity data associated with them that contains various properties.

Bedrock Edition:

See Bedrock Edition level format/Entity format.

Java Edition:

The fish sizes and patterns are depicted in the following table, with white body color and dark-gray pattern color.

		second-least byte
		0	1	2	3	4	5
least byte	1	Flopper Glitter Betty Stripey Blockfish Clayfish Kob Snooper Brinely Sunstreak Dasher Spotty
	0

The 22 varieties of tropical fish most commonly found throughout the world have Variant tag values from the following table, which also lists what color/shape/patterns come from that value.

The variant number is the sum of the most significant byte × 2²⁴ + second most significant byte × 2¹⁶ + second least significant byte × 2⁸ + least significant byte.

Achievements[]

Advancements[]

Icon	Advancement	In-game description	Parent	Actual requirements (if different)	Resource location
	It Spreads	Kill a mob near a Sculk Catalyst	Monster Hunter	Kill one of these 70 mobs near a sculk catalyst: Axolotl Bee Blaze Camel Cat Cave Spider Chicken Chicken Jockey Cod Cow Creeper Donkey Dolphin Drowned Elder Guardian Enderman Endermite Evoker Fox Frog Ghast Goat Glow Squid Guardian Hoglin Horse Husk Llama Magma Cube Mooshroom Ocelot Panda Parrot Phantom Pig Piglin Piglin Brute Pillager Polar Bear Pufferfish Rabbit Ravager Salmon Sheep Shulker Silverfish Skeleton Skeleton Horse Skeleton Horseman Slime Sniffer Stray Spider Spider Jockey Squid Strider Trader Llama Tropical Fish Turtle Vex Vindicator Warden Witch Wither Wither Skeleton Wolf Zoglin Zombie Zombie Villager Zombified Piglin Mobs that drop no experience are ignored for this advancement.	adventure/kill_mob_near_sculk_catalyst
	Tactical Fishing	Catch a Fish... without a Fishing Rod!	Fishy Business	Use a water bucket on any fish mob.	husbandry/tactical_fishing

History[]

Java Edition Alpha
June 28, 2010					Notch mentioned that fish might be a feature of coral, if he were able to add coral: "... I do know that the corals will have tiny fish particles around them."
October 4, 2010					Fish were a passive mob that Notch showed interest in adding. In the promotional graphic for the Halloween Update, Notch indicated he would add fish. However, they were only added as an item; there was no code for a fish mob.
Java Edition
October 5, 2012					Fish were jokingly teased in the fake snapshot 12marc40awesome, along with coral and "fish blocks".
April 13, 2013					When Jon Kågström was asked in his AMA on Reddit, "What mob would you like to implement into the game?" He responded, "I would like to add birds, fish and tree animals to make it more alive. However this will take some time before it can be done."
July 31, 2013					During Notch's AMA on Reddit, when asked about what happened to his plans of adding fish as a mob, he responded, "Oh yeah, the fish!"
1.13		November 18, 2017			Two fish mobs, presumably early tropical fish, were shown off in a clip presented at MineCon Earth.
		18w10a			Added tropical fish.
		18w10b			Tropical fish now make sounds and no longer use the player damage sound.
1.13.1		18w31a			Fish now have a 5% chance of dropping bone meal when killed.
1.17		20w51a			Tropical fish are now attacked by axolotls.
		21w13a			Tropical fish spawned from buckets in the creative inventory now only spawn as white kobs.[4]
1.17.1		Pre-release 2			Tropical fish spawned from buckets in the creative inventory no longer only spawn as white kobs.
1.18		21w40a			Tropical fish now only spawn between y=50 and y=64, with the exception of lush caves in which they can spawn at any height.
1.18.2		22w07a			By fixing MC-244683, tropical fish now also require above a full water block to spawn.
1.19		22w15a			Tropical fish now spawn in mangrove swamps.
Bedrock Edition
March 1, 2018					ThorsHand11 states on the official Minecraft Discord that "more than a handful" of tropical fish will be added.
1.4.0		beta 1.2.14.2			Added all 4 variants of fish mobs.
1.8.0		beta 1.8.0.8			Tropical fish are now slightly bigger.
1.13.0		beta 1.13.0.9			Tropical fish now drop experience when killed.
1.17.0		beta 1.16.230.52			Tropical fish are now attacked by axolotls.
1.18.0		beta 1.18.0.21			Tropical fish now only spawn between y=50 and y=64, with the exception of lush caves in which they can spawn at any height.
		beta 1.18.0.22			Tropical fish can now spawn in lukewarm ocean biomes.
1.19.10		beta 1.19.10.23			The health of tropical fish has been changed to 3.
Legacy Console Edition
TU69		1.76	Patch 38		Added fish mobs.
Education Edition
1.4.0					Added all 4 variants of fish mobs.

Issues[]

Issues relating to "Tropical fish" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.

Gallery[]

Screenshots[]

• 

  An ocean with some fish visible.

• 

  Cod and tropical fish, along with a turtle and squid.

• 

  A screenshot of tropical fish up close.

• 

  Some tropical fish jumping on land.

Official artwork[]

• 

  Tropical Fish as shown in the Update Aquatic artwork.

• 

  Tropical Fish from Update Aquatic artwork.

• 

  Tropical Fish in promotional artwork for the first Caves & Cliffs update.

• 

  Tropical fish in official artwork for The Wild Update.

• 

  Tropical fish art.

• 

  Tropical fish art.

• 

  Tropical fish art.

• 

  Tropical fish art.

• 

  Tropical fish art.

Trivia[]

• In the texture files of Minecraft: Bedrock Edition, there is a hidden texture of a clownfish mob. Clownfish were food items that existed before Update Aquatic, which were replaced by Tropical Fish food items. It is likely that clownfish were intended to become a mob before being expanded into over 2700 variants of tropical fish.

See also[]

• Cod
• Salmon
• Pufferfish

References[]