Tropical Fish

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 "title": "Tropical Fish",
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Tropical fish are common bucketable aquatic passive mobs found in warm or lukewarm 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.^[1]

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 in aquifers 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; lush caves, in groups of 3-5 for the same preset pattern, and in groups of 1-3 for a random pattern; and mangrove swamps. 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 aquifers at any Y levels but require underground.

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

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

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 tropical fish by using a water bucket on it, which gives the player a bucket of tropical fish. Using that fish bucket against a block empties the bucket, placing water with that fish swimming in it. Tropical fish placed via buckets do not despawn naturally.

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

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 aquatic mobs except drowned.‌^{[Java Edition only]}

When tropical fish spawn in the wild, 90% of the time they appear as schools of one of the 22 varieties in the first image, 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^[3], but due to a bug^[1] black can be chosen randomly. This results in 3,072 naturally-occurring combinations, instead of the intended 2,880.

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.

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 uses 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). 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. The specific command used is /summon tropicalfish ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ minecraft:fish_name.

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.

• 👁 BlockSprite light-blue-concrete.png: Sprite image for light-blue-concrete in Minecraft
  Sky (Light Blue; 3)
• 👁 BlockSprite pink-concrete.png: Sprite image for pink-concrete in Minecraft
  Rose (Pink; 6)
• 👁 BlockSprite light-gray-concrete.png: Sprite image for light-gray-concrete in Minecraft
  Silver (Light Gray; 8)
• 👁 BlockSprite cyan-concrete.png: Sprite image for cyan-concrete in Minecraft
  Teal (Cyan; 9)
• 👁 BlockSprite purple-concrete.png: Sprite image for purple-concrete in Minecraft
  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:

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:

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

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.

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 that apply to all mobs:

Advancements that apply to all mobs:

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

• 👁 Anemone
  
  Anemone
• 👁 Black tang
  
  Black tang
• 👁 Blue tang ‌[Java Edition only]
  
  Blue tang ‌^{[Java Edition only]}
• 👁 Blue dory ‌[Bedrock Edition only]
  
  Blue dory ‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]}
• 👁 Butterflyfish ‌[Java Edition only]
  
  Butterflyfish ‌^{[Java Edition only]}
• 👁 Butterfly fish ‌[Bedrock Edition only]
  
  Butterfly fish ‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]}
• 👁 Cichlid
  
  Cichlid
• 👁 Clownfish
  
  Clownfish
• 👁 Cotton candy betta
  
  Cotton candy betta
• 👁 Dottyback
  
  Dottyback
• 👁 Emperor red snapper
  
  Emperor red snapper
• 👁 Goatfish
  
  Goatfish
• 👁 Moorish idol
  
  Moorish idol
• 👁 Ornate butterflyfish
  
  Ornate butterflyfish
• 👁 Parrotfish
  
  Parrotfish
• 👁 Queen angelfish
  
  Queen angelfish
• 👁 Red cichlid
  
  Red cichlid
• 👁 Red lipped blenny
  
  Red lipped blenny
• 👁 Red snapper
  
  Red snapper
• 👁 Threadfin
  
  Threadfin
• 👁 Tomato clownfish ‌[Java Edition only]
  
  Tomato clownfish ‌^{[Java Edition only]}
• 👁 Tomato clown ‌[Bedrock Edition only]
  
  Tomato clown ‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]}
• 👁 Triggerfish
  
  Triggerfish
• 👁 Yellowtail parrotfish
  
  Yellowtail parrotfish
• 👁 Yellow tang [Java Edition only]
  
  Yellow tang ‌^{[Java Edition only]}
• 👁 Yellow tang [Bedrock Edition only]
  
  Yellow tang ‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]}

• 👁 A Minecraft screenshot of a school of fish in a coral reef.
  
  A school of fish in a coral reef.
• 👁 A Minecraft screenshot depicting five tropical fishes swimming through a body of water.
  
  Five tropical fishes swimming through a body of water.

• 👁 An ocean with some fish visible.
  
  An ocean with some fish visible.
• 👁 Cod and tropical fish, along with a turtle and squid.
  
  Cod and tropical fish, along with a turtle and squid.
• 👁 A screenshot of tropical fish up close.
  
  A screenshot of tropical fish up close.
• 👁 Some tropical fish jumping on land.
  
  Some tropical fish jumping on land.

• 👁 Tropical fish A texture file.
  
  Tropical fish A texture file.
• 👁 Tropical fish B texture file.
  
  Tropical fish B texture file.

• 👁 Tropical fish A pattern 1
  
  Tropical fish A pattern 1
• 👁 Tropical fish A pattern 2
  
  Tropical fish A pattern 2
• 👁 Tropical fish A pattern 3
  
  Tropical fish A pattern 3
• 👁 Tropical fish A pattern 4
  
  Tropical fish A pattern 4
• 👁 Tropical fish A pattern 5
  
  Tropical fish A pattern 5
• 👁 Tropical fish A pattern 6
  
  Tropical fish A pattern 6
• 👁 Tropical fish B pattern 1
  
  Tropical fish B pattern 1
• 👁 Tropical fish B pattern 2
  
  Tropical fish B pattern 2
• 👁 Tropical fish B pattern 3
  
  Tropical fish B pattern 3
• 👁 Tropical fish B pattern 4
  
  Tropical fish B pattern 4
• 👁 Tropical fish B pattern 5
  
  Tropical fish B pattern 5
• 👁 Tropical fish B pattern 6
  
  Tropical fish B pattern 6

• 👁 The tropical fish spawn egg in Bedrock Edition beta 1.2.14.2.
  
  The tropical fish spawn egg in Bedrock Edition beta 1.2.14.2.
• 👁 Unused clownfish texture
  
  Unused clownfish texture
• 👁 A recreated render of the unused clownfish mob.
  
  A recreated render of the unused clownfish mob.

• 👁 Tropical Fish as shown in the Update Aquatic artwork.
  
  Tropical Fish as shown in the Update Aquatic artwork.
• 👁 Tropical Fish from Update Aquatic artwork.
  
  Tropical Fish from Update Aquatic artwork.
• 👁 Tropical Fish in promotional artwork for the first Caves & Cliffs update.
  
  Tropical Fish in promotional artwork for the first Caves & Cliffs update.
• 👁 Tropical fish in official artwork for The Wild Update.
  
  Tropical fish in official artwork for The Wild Update.
• 👁 Ornate butterflyfish art.
  
  Ornate butterflyfish art.
• 👁 Clownfish art.
  
  Clownfish art.
• 👁 Yellowtail parrotfish art.
  
  Yellowtail parrotfish art.
• 👁 Yellow tang art.
  
  Yellow tang art.
• 👁 Teal-lime kob art.
  
  Teal-lime kob art.
• 👁 Image
  
• 👁 Image
  
• 👁 Artwork of a clownfish entity, predating the Update Aquatic.
  
  Artwork of a clownfish entity, predating the Update Aquatic.
• 👁 A hoodie featuring tropical fish.
  
  A hoodie featuring tropical fish.
• 👁 A tropical fish as it appears in Minecraft Earth.
  
  A tropical fish as it appears in Minecraft Earth.
• 👁 A tropical fish as it appears in Minecraft Dungeons.
  
  A tropical fish as it appears in Minecraft Dungeons.

• 👁 Image
  Cod
• 👁 Image
  Salmon
• 👁 Image
  Pufferfish

• "Taking Inventory: Tropical fish" by Duncan Geere – Minecraft.net, June 27, 2025.