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This article is about fish in their mob form. For other uses, see Fish.

Tom Stone Mojang avatar

You're not the only new explorer of the updated oceans, mind. We've filled the seas with new types of fish! Above is the delightful pufferfish, which filled me with delightful poison because I was too busy taking that screenshot to swim away in time :(

Tom Stone[1]

Fish are common passive mobs found in oceans and rivers. They come in 4 main variants: cod, salmon, pufferfish, and tropical fish. Tropical fish have 3,584 variants, so the total amount of fish adds up to 3,587 fish.

Spawning

Cod spawn in normal, cold, and lukewarm oceans, and their deep variants.

Pufferfish and tropical fish spawn in lukewarm, warm, and deep lukewarm oceans.

Salmon spawn in cold and frozen oceans, and their deep variants. Unlike the other types of fish, they also spawn in normal and frozen rivers. Salmon can spawn in 3 sizes which are small, normal and large.‌[Bedrock and Legacy Console editions only]

Drops

Fish drop 1 of their item form when killed:

Behavior

Cod, salmon and tropical fish tend to swim in schools of fish (a maximum of nine cod, six salmon, and nine of the same tropical per school). Salmon are able to swim up approximately 4-5 blocks in waterfalls. Pufferfish will try to hide in a coral or a coral fan and will spin until it leaves; they will also puff up when approached by dolphins and armor stands.[2] They will also swim up waterfalls, like salmon. In Bedrock Edition, however, pufferfish will also puff up when near most hostile mobs.

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 will 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.‌[Legacy Console and Bedrock editions only]

Weaknesses

None of the fish are able to survive out of water. Outside of water, they flop around like guardians for a while until eventually they start to suffocate and die like squids. Cod, salmon and tropical fish will flip around on their sides. They will rotate when flipping.‌[Bedrock and Legacy Console editions only] Fish cannot swim or breathe in cauldron water.[3]

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

Guardians will use their laser attack on fish in Bedrock Edition.

Defenses

Pufferfish will puff up when approached by a player in Survival or Adventure mode, drowned, or any non-water mob in a 5x5x5 cube around the fish, going from unpuffed, then semi-puffed, to fully puffed‌[Java Edition only], or instantly to the fully-puffed state‌[Legacy Console and Bedrock editions only]. Pufferfish are technically passive mobs but going near one when fully puffed will inflict the player/mob with seven seconds of Poison, and touching them in their puffed form will deal damage separate from the poison. Pufferfish also instantly puff up to their fullest form after taking any kind of damage.‌[Bedrock Edition only]

Tropical fish varieties

Wild Tropical Fish Variants

The 22 common varieties of tropical fish in Bedrock Edition.
top: White-Silver SunStreak, Red-White Kob, 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

When tropical fish spawn in the wild, 90% of the time they will come in one of the 22 varieties seen on the right, and the other 10% of the time their patterns, size and colors will be completely random, drawn from any of 2 shapes, 15 colors, 6 patterns, and 15 colors for the pattern. These result in 2,700 naturally-occurring combinations.

With commands, the player can summon tropical fish 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.‌[Java Edition only]

Names

Tropical fish also have assigned names which can be seen after capture, so that the buckets are given names like "Bucket of Plum Blockfish", "Bucket of Sky-Orange Snooper" or "Bucket of Orange-Lime Dasher" in Bedrock Edition, while the types and colors are seen as tooltips in Java Edition. Their colors are mostly named according to the colored block names, though with a few exceptions:

  • White
  • Orange
  • Magenta
  • Sky
  • Yellow
  • Lime
  • Rose
  • Gray
  • Silver
  • Teal
  • Plum
  • Blue
  • Brown
  • Green
  • Red

The base color will come first, and if the pattern color is different, it will come after that. Lastly, the fish bucket will be given a name according to the shape and pattern of the fish:

Flopper Glitter Betty
Stripey Blockfish Clayfish
Tropical Fish Patterns
Kob Snooper Brinely
SunStreak Dasher Spotty

Some tropical fish don't follow the normal naming system, and instead reference real-life fish species. Apart from these names, these types of 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 ‌[Bedrock Edition only] Gray-Sky SunStreak
Blue Tang ‌[Java Edition only] Gray-Blue Flopper
Butterfly Fish ‌[Bedrock Edition only]/Butterflyfish ‌[Java Edition only] White-Gray Brinely
Cichlid Blue-Gray SunStreak
Clownfish Orange-White Kob
Cotton Candy Betta Rose-Sky Spotty
Dottyback Plum-Yellow Blockfish
Emperor Red Snapper White-Red Clayfish
Goatfish White-Yellow Spotty
Moorish Idol White-Gray Glitter
Ornate Butterfly ‌[Bedrock Edition only]/Ornate Butterflyfish ‌[Java Edition only] White-Orange Clayfish
Parrotfish Teal-Rose Dasher
Queen Angel Fish ‌[Bedrock Edition only]/Queen Angelfish ‌[Java Edition only] Lime-Sky Brinely
Red Cichlid Red-White Betty
Red Lipped Blenny Gray-Red Snooper
Red Snapper Red-White Blockfish
Threadfin White-Yellow Flopper
Tomato Clown ‌[Bedrock Edition only] Red-White SunStreak
Tomato Clownfish ‌[Java Edition only] Red-White Kob
Triggerfish Gray-White SunStreak
Yellowtail Parrot ‌[Bedrock Edition only]/Yellowtail Parrotfish ‌[Java Edition only] Teal-Yellow Dasher
Yellow Tang Yellow Stripey

Data values

ID

Fish (mob)/ID

Entity data

See also: Chunk format

Cod and salmon have entity data associated with them that contain various properties of the mob.

Pufferfish and tropical fish have additional entity data, beyond what other fish have.

Fish (mob)/ED

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
Tropical Fish Patterns
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 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 0 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

Template:Load achievements: Unknown achievement. Achievement title not found on page Achievement

Advancements

Icon Advancement In-game description Parent Actual requirements (if different) Resource location
Advancement-plain-rawTactical Fishing
Catch a Fish... without a Fishing Rod! Fishy BusinessUse a water bucket on any fish mob.husbandry/tactical_fishing

History

alpha
June 28, 2010Notch 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, 2010Fish 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, 2012Fish were jokingly teased in the fake snapshot 12marc40awesome, along with coral and "fish blocks".
April 13, 2013When 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, 2013During 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!"
1.13November 18, 2017File:TeasedFish.jpeg Two fish mobs, presumably early tropical fish, were shown off in a clip presented at MineCon Earth.
18w08bAdded fish mobs, at this time only cod, salmon, and "puffer fish".
Fish mobs have 20♥ × 10 health.
18w10aAdded tropical fish.
The health of fish has now been changed to 3♥♥.[4]
18w10bTropical fish will now make sounds and will now no longer use the player damage sound.
18w15aCod and salmon will now drop the cooked version of their item drops, if killed while on fire.
18w19aCorrected "Puffer Fish" to Pufferfish.[5]
1.13.118w31aFish will now have a 5% chance of dropping bone meal when killed.
Bedrock Edition
1.4beta 1.2.14.2Added all 4 variants of fish mobs.
1.8beta 1.8.0.8Tropical fish are now slightly bigger.
Legacy Console Edition
TU69 1.76 Patch 38Added fish mobs.
Education Edition
1.4.0Added all 4 variants of fish mobs.

Issues

Issues relating to "Fish mob", "Pufferfish mob", "Cod mob", "Salmon mob", or "Tropical fish mob" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.

Gallery

In other media

References

  1. "How We Ruin-ed Minecraft" – Minecraft.net, March 5, 2018
  2. MC-132239
  3. MC-126819 – "fish bouncing and suffocating on top of the cauldron which fill with water" resolved as "Won't Fix"
  4. MC-126091 – "Fish mobs have 20 health", resolved
  5. MC-124190 – "Some display names don't follow the id", resolved
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