TROPICAL FISH

Tropical fish are the one bucket-catch that never becomes dinner. There is no recipe for cooking it, no stew that calls for it, no reason to hold it except its colours and the Fisherman who buys it. Everyone who scoops one into a bucket for the tank ends up with the fish itself as a leftover, and that leftover is exactly what this trade wants.

He offers it at expert, well up his ladder but short of the very top, so a mid-progress Fisherman is already a buyer even before his best offers unlock.

To sell tropical fish for emeralds, bring it to a Fisherman at the Expert tier, 6 units per emerald.

The best rate any villager offers is an emerald per 6 tropical fish, from the Fisherman, and 6 of the other 10 pay out faster. No villager sells tropical fish back, so it is emeralds out and nothing in.

One slot at the Fisherman takes 6 tropical fish a trade, 12 trades, 12 emeralds. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

12 acacia boats against 384 sticks for the same 12 emeralds, 32 times the carrying, and the shortest wait is the Leatherworker at 7.5 real minutes of shelf, gathering not counted. Tropical Fish itself pays 6 an emerald, so 23 of the 72 ask less and 46 ask more.

Every tropical fish offer here locks after 12 uses, and a villager restocks up to twice a Minecraft day, no more.

The earliest tropical fish shows up is the Fisherman's Expert tier, level 4 of five. A freshly employed Fisherman is still several promotions away from offering it.

12 trades empty the slot, and 2 real minutes later it refills, the same clock every Fisherman shares. A Minecraft day holds two of those refills across 20 real minutes.

One Fisherman worked through both moves 144 tropical fish for 24 emeralds, whether the catch came from a coral reef or a tank you emptied out.

One villager, one restock: the Fisherman pays an emerald per 6 tropical fish and that slot runs 12 trades, so 72 tropical fish is all one will take before it locks.

Where they go back: campfires are that Fisherman's cheapest offer.

Also on the Fisherman's list: pufferfish, oak boat, spruce boat, jungle boat, acacia boat and dark oak boat.

Tropical fish restore almost nothing, so their value is not food. They come in a huge number of patterns and colours, which is the point: an aquarium built from bucketed fish is one of the few decorations in the game that moves on its own.

Axolotls eat them, and a bucket of tropical fish is how you breed one, which makes the fish a step in a chain rather than an end. Warm oceans and coral reefs are where they live, so a trade saves a long swim in the right biome.

Tropical fish only spawn in warm oceans and lush caves, which puts them in the same trip as the coral. Outside those places the only ones that exist are the ones somebody carried there in a bucket.

An axolotl hunts them, and a bucket of tropical fish is the only thing that will breed or lead one. That single dependency is why the bucket is worth more than the fish inside it.

Killed rather than bucketed, a tropical fish drops itself and occasionally bone meal, and it is the one fish where killing it throws away the whole point: the pattern, which is what an aquarium is for.

Tropical Fish are the rarest of the four fish a rod can catch, and the Fisherman still asks 6 of them per emerald. A farm that fishes for hours is the sane way to collect that many Tropical Fish: How to Build an AFK Fish Farm in Minecraft.