Tropical Fish
Health points |
3 |
---|---|
Behavior |
Passive |
Hitbox size |
In Java Edition: In Bedrock Edition: |
Spawn |
See § Spawning |
Items usable on |
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Tropical Fish are common passive mobs found in oceans. There are 3,584 possible variants.
Contents
Spawning[edit]
Java Edition[edit]
In Java Edition, tropical fish spawn in lukewarm, warm and deep lukewarm oceans in groups of 8 at 24 (cylindrical) to 64 (spherical) blocks away from the player, with random patterns (see below).
Bedrock Edition[edit]
In Bedrock Edition, fish spawn underwater at 12-32 blocks away from the player. Tropical fish spawn only in warm ocean biomes, in groups of 3-5 for the same preset pattern, and in groups of 1-3 for a random pattern. In addition, tropical fish only spawn on the surface (i.e., there must not be a spawnable block above the spawn location with a non-solid block on top).
Drops[edit]
- 1 tropical fish.
- 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[edit]
Tropical fish tend to swim in schools of fish (a maximum of nine tropical fish per school).
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. An empty bucket may be used as well.[Bedrock Edition only]
Weaknesses[edit]
Tropical fish cannot survive out of water. Outside of water, they flop around like guardians for a while until eventually they suffocate and die like squid. In Bedrock Edition, they rotate when flipping. Fish cannot swim or breathe in cauldron water.[1]
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[edit]

top: White-Silver SunStreak, Tomato Clownfish, Yellow Tang, White-Gray Dasher
second row: Parrotfish, Queen Angel Fish, Red Cichlid, Red Lipped Blenny, Red Snapper, Threadfin
third row: Cotton Candy Betta, Dottyback, Emperor Red Snapper, Goatfish, Moorish Idol, Ornate Butterfly
bottom: Anemone, Black Tang, Blue Dory, Butterfly Fish, Cichlid, Clownfish
Java Edition[edit]
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, 15 colors, 6 patterns, and 15 colors for the pattern. The color black does not appear on any naturally-spawned tropical fish, since the eyes are usually hard to see.[2] 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[edit]
Tropical fish do not have common varieties in Bedrock Edition. Instead, all tropical fish use randomly chosen patterns, sizes, and colors (except black).
Names[edit]
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:
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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 |
---|---|
Anemone | Orange-Gray Stripey |
Black Tang | Gray Flopper |
Blue Dory[BE only] | Gray-Light Blue Sunstreak[JE only] Gray-Sky SunStreak[BE only] |
Blue Tang[JE only] | Gray-Blue Flopper |
Butterfly Fish | White-Gray Clayfish[JE only] White-Gray Brinely[BE only] |
Cichlid | Blue-Gray Sunstreak[n 1] |
Clownfish | Orange-White Kob |
Cotton Candy Betta[n 2] | 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[n 2] | 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 Clown[BE only] | Red-White SunStreak[n 1] |
Tomato Clownfish[JE only] | Red-White Kob |
Triggerfish | Gray-White SunStreak[n 1] |
Yellowtail Parrotfish[JE only] Yellowtail Parrot[BE only] |
Cyan-Yellow Dasher[JE only] Teal-Yellow Dasher[BE only] |
Yellow Tang | Yellow Flopper |
- ↑ a b c d Sunstreak in Java Edition, SunStreak in Bedrock Edition.
- ↑ a b The Emperor Red Snapper and Cotton Candy Betta have different names between the US and UK localizations, being 'Red Emperor' and 'Candyfloss Betta' in the UK.
Color-White Kob Variants[edit]
There are different base colors of color-white kobs.
Using the /summon
command to make a different base color-white kobs.
In order to summon a color-white kob make sure its this: /summon tropical_fish ~ ~ ~ {Variant:(Color-White Kob ID)
}
Name | Type | ID |
---|---|---|
Orange Clownfish | Orange-White Kob | 65536 |
Magenta Clownfish | Magenta-White Kob | 131072 |
Light Blue Clownfish | Light Blue-White Kob | 196608 |
Yellow Clownfish | Yellow-White Kob | 262144 |
Lime Clownfish | Lime-White Kob | 327680 |
Pink Clownfish | Pink-White Kob | 393216 |
Gray Clownfish | Gray-White Kob | 458752 |
Sounds[edit]
Sound | Subtitle | Source | Description | Namespaced ID | Translation key | Volume | Pitch | Attenuation distance |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
- | None[sound 1] | ? | Randomly | entity.tropical_fish.ambient | None[sound 2] | ? | ? | ? |
? | ? | Plays when it dies | entity.tropical_fish.death | subtitles.entity.tropical_fish.death | ? | 0.8 | 16 | |
? | ? | Plays when on land | entity.tropical_fish.flop | subtitles.entity.tropical_fish.flop | 0.3 | ? | 16 | |
? | ? | Plays when damaged | entity.tropical_fish.hurt | subtitles.entity.tropical_fish.hurt | ? | ? | 16 |
- ↑ Reports on Mojira.
- ↑ Empty events do not have this parameter set.
Data values[edit]
ID[edit]
Name | Namespaced ID | Entity tags (JE) | Translation key |
---|---|---|---|
Tropical Fish | tropical_fish | axolotl_always_hostiles[upcoming: JE 1.17] | entity.minecraft.tropical_fish |
Name | Namespaced ID | Numeric ID | Translation key |
---|---|---|---|
Tropical Fish | tropical_fish | 111 | entity.tropical_fish.name |
Entity data[edit]
Tropical fish have entity data associated with them that contains various properties.
- Entity data
- Tags common to all entities see Template:Nbt inherit/entity/template
- Tags common to all mobs see Template:Nbt inherit/mob/template
- FromBucket: 1 or 0 (true/false) - Whether the fish had ever been released from a bucket.
- 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
The fish sizes and patterns are depicted in the following table, with white body color and dark-gray pattern color.
second-least byte | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
least byte |
1 |
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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 | Name |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 65536 | Orange-White Kob |
0 | 0 | 14 | 0 | 917504 | Red-White Kob |
1 | 3 | 14 | 0 | 918273 | Red-White Blockfish |
1 | 4 | 14 | 0 | 918529 | Red-White Betty |
1 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 16778497 | White-Orange Clayfish |
0 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 50660352 | Lime-Sky Brinely |
0 | 5 | 6 | 3 | 50726144 | Rose-Sky Spotty |
0 | 1 | 7 | 3 | 50790656 | Gray-Sky SunStreak [Bedrock Edition only] |
1 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 67108865 | White-Yellow Flopper |
0 | 5 | 0 | 4 | 67110144 | White-Yellow Spotty |
1 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 67371265 | Yellow Stripey |
1 | 3 | 10 | 4 | 67764993 | Plum-Yellow Blockfish |
0 | 3 | 9 | 6 | 101253888 | Teal-Rose Dasher |
1 | 2 | 0 | 7 | 117441025 | White-Gray Glitter |
0 | 3 | 0 | 7 | 117441280 | White-Gray Dasher |
0 | 4 | 0 | 7 | 117441536 | White-Gray Brinely |
1 | 1 | 1 | 7 | 117506305 | Orange-Gray Stripey |
1 | 0 | 7 | 7 | 117899265 | Gray Flopper |
0 | 1 | 11 | 7 | 118161664 | Blue-Gray SunStreak |
0 | 1 | 0 | 8 | 134217984 | White-Silver Sunstreak |
1 | 0 | 7 | 11 | 185008129 | Gray-Blue Flopper [Java Edition only] |
1 | 5 | 0 | 14 | 234882305 | White-Red Clayfish |
0 | 2 | 7 | 14 | 235340288 | Gray-Red Snooper |
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[edit]
Icon | Achievement | In-game description | Actual requirements (if different) | Gamerscore earned | Trophy type (PS) | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() | I am a Marine Biologist | Collect a fish in a bucket | Use an empty bucket on any fish mob to collect it. | 20G | Bronze |
Advancements[edit]
Icon | Advancement | In-game description | Parent | Actual requirements (if different) | Namespaced ID |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() | Tactical Fishing | Catch a fish... without a fishing rod! | Fishy Business | Use a water bucket to pick up any fish mob. | husbandry/tactical_fishing
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History[edit]
Java Edition Alpha | |||||
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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 | ![]() ![]() | |||
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. | |||
Upcoming Java Edition | |||||
1.17 | 20w51a | Tropical fishes are now attacked by axolotls | |||
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. | |||
Legacy Console Edition | |||||
TU69 | 1.76 | Patch 38 | Added fish mobs. | ||
Education Edition | |||||
1.4.0 | Added all 4 variants of fish mobs. |
Issues[edit]
Issues relating to "Tropical fish" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.