Where to find tropical fish in Minecraft

With thousands of Minecraft variants, tropical fish are some of the most diverse mobs in the entire game, and they're readily available for players that search them out.

Unlike cod or salmon, Minecraft players won't be snagging tropical fish with a fishing rod in the vanilla version of the game. In order to collect them, players will need to grab some water-filled buckets and set out to either warm or lukewarm ocean biomes.

Fresh water and frozen oceans won't do the trick here, as they are hosts to different fish and aren't quite "tropical" enough for tropical fish. Once players find some tropical fish in the ocean, all they need to do is use the bucket on the fish mob and they'll have captured themselves a live tropical fish.

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Minecraft: Additional info about tropical fish

Image via Mojang

Added to Minecraft's Java edition in version 1.13 and its Bedrock edition in version 1.4, tropical fish have spent a few years as part of the game's mob ecosystem. Most recently, they have become the preferred snack for the game's new Axolotl mobs, allowing players to breed the friendly amphibians.

Otherwise, they can be an enjoyable addition to the decorative pursuits for those who have created man-made bodies of water.

The variety in the way that tropical fish spawn is slightly dependent on which version of Minecraft players are playing on. In Java Edition, there are 22 defined varieties that the majority (90%) of tropical fish will spawn as, which are named below:

• Parrotfish
• Queen Angelfish
• Red Chichlid
• Red Lipped Blenny
• Red Snapper
• Threadfin
• Anemone
• White-Silver Sunstreak
• Tomato Clownfish
• Black Tang
• Blue Dory
• Butterfly Fish
• Chichlid
• Clownfish
• Yellow Tang
• White-Gray Dasher
• Cotton Candy Betta
• Dottyback
• Red Emperor
• Goatfish
• Moorish Idol
• Ornate Butterfly

Ten percent of the time, tropical fish will spawn randomly with no assigned common variant. In Minecraft: Bedrock Edition, there are no established common variants, instead it relies on a number of standard preset fish while also spawning fish randomly similar to Java Edition.

By using a bucket to capture the tropical fish in Bedrock Edition, players can identify the color and type of the fish by checking the bucket's name. For example, a bucket filled with a certain tropical fish may be named "Bucket of Rose-Sky Spotty."

In both Bedrock and Java editions of Minecraft, players will additionally receive an Achievement/Advancement from placing a tropical fish in a bucket for the first time. Depending on the edition of the game, they will receive one of the following:

• Tactical Fishing (Java Edition)
• I am a Marine Biologist (Bedrock Edition)

Whatever players choose to do with their buckets of tropical fish is up to them, but there are a few things to remember if they are being kept alive instead of being fed to Axolotls:

• Placing the water from a bucket of tropical fish will release both the water and the fish into the target location. If a tropical fish is placed this way, it won't de-spawn naturally the way it would if it was naturally generated in the ocean.
• Placing a tropical fish outside of a body of water will cause it to flop similarly to mobs such as Guardians before eventually dying from suffocation.
• Fish cannot survive or swim within water placed in a cauldron.

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