Tropical Fish

Tropical Fish

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Health points	3HP
Behavior	Passive
Mob type	Animal, Aquatic
Hitbox size	In Java Edition: Height: 0.4 blocks Width: 0.5 blocks In Bedrock Edition: Height: 0.52 blocks Width: 0.52 blocks
Speed	0.7
Spawn	Mangrove Swamp Lukewarm Ocean Deep Lukewarm Ocean Warm Ocean Lush Caves
Usable items	Water Bucket

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    "title": "Tropical Fish",
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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 in Bedrock Edition and 3,072 in Java Edition.

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) and mangrove swamps 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, and deep ocean variants can spawn only 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

On death

Item		Roll Chance	Quantity (Roll Chance)
			Default	Looting I	Looting II	Looting III
	Tropical Fish	100%	1	1	1	1
	Bone Meal(JE)	5%	1	1	1	1
	Bone(BE)	25%	1–2	2–4	3–6	4–8

• 1–3XP when killed by a player or tamed wolf.

Behavior

Tropical fish tend to swim in schools of fish with a maximum of 7 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 tropical fish. Fish placed with buckets do not despawn naturally. Using that fish bucket against a block empties the bucket, placing water with that fish swimming in it. An empty bucket may be used as well.‌

Tropical fish can not be bred, but only spawn in designated biomes.

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.

Fish have a weakness to weapons that have the Impaling enchantment, which also affects squid, turtles, guardians, elder guardians and dolphins.‌

Varieties

The 22 uniquely-named varieties of tropical fish in Java Edition. From top to bottom and left to right:

1. Anemone, Black Tang, Blue Tang, Butterflyfish, Cichlid, Clownfish
2. Cotton Candy Betta, Dottyback, Emperor Red Snapper, Goatfish, Moorish Idol, Ornate Butterflyfish
3. Parrotfish, Queen Angelfish, Red Cichlid, Red Lipped Blenny, Red Snapper, Threadfin
4. Tomato Clownfish, Triggerfish, Yellowtail Parrotfish, Yellow Tang

All possible tropical fish variants.

Java Edition

When tropical fish spawn in the wild, 90% of the time they appear as schools of one of the 22 varieties seen on the right, and the other 10% of the time their patterns, shape, and colors are completely random, drawn from any of 2 shapes, 6 patterns, 16 base colors, and 16 pattern colors. The color black is not supposed to appear on any naturally-spawned tropical fish, since the eyes are usually hard to see, but due to a bug black can be chosen randomly. This results in 3,072 naturally-occurring combinations, instead of the intended 2,700.

Tropical fish can be summoned with black as one or both of their colors, and/or without any visible pattern,​ 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 22 preset variants, and the other use randomly chosen patterns, sizes, shapes, and colors (except black). Tropical fish spawned from a spawn egg use randomly chosen patterns, sizes, shapes, and colors (except black). By using commands, tropical fish may be spawned as one of the 22 preset variants (due to MCPE-117477, Yellowtail Parrot Fish do not spawn, therefore only 21 preset variants exist on Bedrock Edition).

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 Dottyback", "Bucket of Sky-Orange Snooper", or "Bucket of Orange-Lime Dasher". In Java Edition, the type, and colors are displayed as additional lines in the item tooltip.

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	Stripey	Glitter	Blockfish	Betty	Clayfish	Kob	Sunstreak	Snooper	Dasher	Brinely	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 also 22 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.

These varieties are:

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

Sounds

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

Sounds
Sound	Subtitles	Source	Description	Resource location	Translation key	Volume	Pitch	Attenuation distance
None	​None	Friendly Creatures	Randomly	entity.tropical_fish.ambient	None​	1.0	0.8-1.2	16
	​Tropical Fish dies	Friendly Creatures	When a tropical fish dies	entity.tropical_fish.death	subtitles.entity.tropical_fish.death​	1.0	0.64-0.96	16
	​Tropical Fish hurts	Friendly Creatures	When a tropical fish is damaged	entity.tropical_fish.hurt	subtitles.entity.tropical_fish.hurt​	1.0	0.8-1.2	16
	​Tropical Fish flops	Friendly Creatures	When a tropical fish is outside of water	entity.tropical_fish.flop	subtitles.entity.tropical_fish.flop​	0.3	0.8-1.2	16
	​Splashes	Friendly Creatures	While a tropical fish is swimming	entity.fish.swim	subtitles.entity.fish.swim​	0.0-1.0	0.6-1.4	16

Bedrock Edition:

Sounds
Sound	Source	Description	Resource location	Volume	Pitch
	Friendly Creatures	When a tropical fish dies	mob.fish.hurt	1.0	0.8-1.2
	Friendly Creatures	When a tropical fish is damaged	mob.fish.hurt	1.0	0.8-1.2
	Friendly Creatures	While a tropical fish is on land	mob.fish.flop	1.0	1.0
	Friendly Creatures	While a tropical fish is swimming	mob.fish.step	0.15	1.0

Data values

ID

Java Edition:

Name	Identifier	Entity tags	Translation key
Tropical Fish	tropical_fish	aquatic axolotl_hunt_targets can_breathe_under_water not_scary_for_pufferfish sensitive_to_impaling	entity.minecraft.tropical_fish

Bedrock Edition:

Name	Identifier	Numeric ID	Translation key
Tropical Fish	tropicalfish	111	entity.tropicalfish.name

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:

• [NBT Compound / JSON Object] Entity data
  • Tags common to all entities see Template:Nbt inherit/entity/template
  • Tags common to all mobs see Template:Nbt inherit/mob/template
  • [Byte] FromBucket: 1 or 0 (true/false) - Whether the fish had ever been released from a bucket.
  • [Int] Variant: A 4-byte integer.
    • The least significant byte has a value of either 0 for a small fish, or 1 for a large fish. Values above 1 result in an invisible fish.
    • The next byte has a value from 0–5, representing the pattern on the fish. Values above 5 result in a fish with no pattern.
    • The next byte has a value from 0–15, representing the color of the fish's body.
    • The most significant byte has a value from 0–15, representing the color of the fish's pattern.

Color

[edit]

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.

Shape	Pattern	Base color	Pattern color	Variant	Type	Name
0	0	1	0	65536	Orange-White Kob	Clownfish
0	1	7	0	459008	Gray-White Sunstreak	Triggerfish
0	0	14	0	917504	Red-White Kob	Tomato Clownfish
1	3	14	0	918273	Red-White Blockfish	Red Snapper
1	4	14	0	918529	Red-White Betty	Red Cichlid
1	5	0	1	16778497	White-Orange Clayfish	Ornate Butterflyfish
0	4	5	3	50660352	Lime-Light Blue Brinely	Queen Angelfish
0	5	6	3	50726144	Pink-Light Blue Spotty	Cotton Candy Betta
1	0	0	4	67108865	White-Yellow Flopper	Threadfin
0	5	0	4	67110144	White-Yellow Spotty	Goatfish
1	0	4	4	67371009	Yellow Flopper	Yellow Tang
0	3	9	4	67699456	Cyan-Yellow Dasher	Yellowtail Parrotfish
1	3	10	4	67764993	Purple-Yellow Blockfish	Dottyback
0	3	9	6	101253888	Cyan-Pink Dasher	Parrotfish
1	2	0	7	117441025	White-Gray Glitter	Moorish Idol
1	5	0	7	117441793	White-Gray Clayfish	Butterflyfish
1	1	1	7	117506305	Orange-Gray Stripey	Anemone
1	0	7	7	117899265	Gray Flopper	Black Tang
0	1	11	7	118161664	Blue-Gray SunStreak	Cichlid
1	0	7	11	185008129	Gray-Blue Flopper	Blue Tang
1	5	0	14	234882305	White-Red Clayfish	Emperor Red Snapper
0	2	7	14	235340288	Gray-Red Snooper	Red Lipped Blenny

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

Icon		Achievement	In-game description	Actual requirements (if different)	Gamerscore earned	Trophy type (PS)
PS4	Other
		I am a Marine Biologist	Collect a fish in a bucket	Use a water bucket on any fish mob.	20	Bronze
		It Spreads	Kill a mob next to a catalyst	—	10	Bronze
		Overkill	Deal nine hearts of damage in a single hit.	Damage can be dealt to any mob, even those that do not have nine hearts of health overall.	30	Bronze
		Over-Overkill	Deal 50 hearts of damage in a single hit using the Mace	—	20	Silver

Advancements

Icon	Advancement	In-game description	Actual requirements (if different)
	A Throwaway Joke	Throw a Trident at something. Note: Throwing away your only weapon is not a good idea.	Hit a mob with a thrown trident.
	Adventure	Adventure, exploration and combat	Kill any mob, or be killed by any living entity.
	Arbalistic	Kill five unique mobs with one crossbow shot	Armor Stand also counts for this advancement. This is a hidden advancement, meaning that it can be viewed by the player only after completing it, regardless of if its child advancement(s), if any, have been completed.
	It Spreads	Kill a mob near a Sculk Catalyst	Kill one of these 73 mobs near a sculk catalyst: Mobs that drop no experience as well as the ender dragon are ignored for this advancement.
	Over-Overkill	Deal 50 hearts of damage in a single hit using the Mace	–
	Tactical Fishing	Catch a Fish... without a Fishing Rod!	Use a water bucket on any fish mob.
	Take Aim	Shoot something with an Arrow	Using a bow or a crossbow, shoot a mob with an arrow, tipped arrow, or spectral arrow.

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 added only 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.
1.17			21w13a				Tropical fish spawned from buckets in the creative inventory now spawn as only white kobs.
1.17.1			Pre-release 2				Tropical fish spawned from buckets in the creative inventory no longer spawn only as white kobs.
1.18			21w40a				Tropical fish now spawn only 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.
1.19.3			?				Black is now a valid base and pattern color for tropical fish.
Bedrock Edition
March 1, 2018							ThorsHand11 states on the official Minecraft Discord about the addition of "more than a handful" of tropical fish.
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 spawn only between y=50 and y=64, with the exception of lush caves in which they can spawn at any height.
1.18.0			beta 1.18.0.22				Tropical fish can now spawn in lukewarm ocean biomes.
1.19.10			Preview 1.19.10.23				The health of tropical fish has been changed to 3HP.
Legacy Console Edition
Xbox 360	Xbox One	PS3	PS4	PS Vita	Wii U	Switch
TU69		1.76	1.76	1.76	Patch 38		Added fish mobs.
Minecraft Education
1.4.0							Added all 4 variants of fish mobs.

Issues

Issues relating to "Tropical fish" are maintained on the bug tracker. Issues should be reported and viewed there.

Gallery

Renders

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Screenshots

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  An ocean with some fish visible.

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

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  A screenshot of tropical fish up close.

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  Some tropical fish jumping on land.

Textures

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  Tropical fish A texture file.

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  Tropical fish B texture file.

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  Tropical fish A pattern 1

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  Tropical fish A pattern 2

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  Tropical fish A pattern 3

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  Tropical fish A pattern 4

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  Tropical fish A pattern 5

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  Tropical fish A pattern 6

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  Tropical fish B pattern 1

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  Tropical fish B pattern 2

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  Tropical fish B pattern 3

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  Tropical fish B pattern 4

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  Tropical fish B pattern 5

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  Tropical fish B pattern 6

Other

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  The tropical fish spawn egg in Bedrock Edition beta 1.2.14.2.

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  Unused clownfish texture

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  A possible look of the unused clownfish mob.

In other media

• 

  Tropical Fish as shown in the Update Aquatic artwork.

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  Tropical Fish from Update Aquatic artwork.

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

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  Tropical fish in official artwork for The Wild Update.

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  Tropical fish art.

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  Tropical fish art.

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  Tropical fish art.

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  Tropical fish art.

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  Tropical fish art.

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  Artwork of a clownfish entity, predating the Update Aquatic.

See also

• Cod
• Salmon
• Pufferfish

External links

• Saltwater fish article on Wikipedia