Best Fish for the Ponds?

[lmandrews012]

Hey guys, I wrote an article picking out a bunch of the best fish to put in the ponds and I was wondering which fish reigns supreme in your guys' eyes.

 

[Lew Zealand]

I like the Slimejack as it's given me 2 Slime Eggs recently and I'd never even considered getting the Slime Hutch until getting these squishy little jiggle monsters. Also, green water! But I have a number of the same Fish you mention except for the Ginger Island ones. And I have a Super Cucumber instead of the regular Sea Cucumber.

Um, it's Super. So that's more better, right? Oh, and puuuurrrple!

Also I have a Midnight Squid instead of an Octopus, for Seafoam Pudding. But no Flounder, because that makes sense, right?

 

[imnvs]

The only fish I have in fish ponds:
2 each of lava eel, ice pip and blobfish ponds because they are the most expensive and their roe is worth the most.
1 slimejack pond for the slime and slime eggs.
1 each of midnight squid, midnight carp and flounder ponds for seafoam pudding ingredients.
1 eel pond for spicy eel ingredients.

 

[Boo1972]

Let’s see- you’ll need one sturgeon pond for perfection and the lost bundle. Lava eels of course, but ice pips too; they are annoying to catch so I never sell them. Slime jacks for the slime eggs and green water. if you have red water (lava eels) and green water you might as well have a super cucumber and void salmon to complete the collection. The blob fish is great for its roe and other drops, but will probably get lonely surrounded by strange fish so you’ll need a midnight squid and spook fish too. One each of the Ginger Island fish. Oh a pond for the beautiful midnight carp. Then there’s a crab pond and an octopus pond and well, I might have a fish pond obsession.

Thank Yoba for fish tanks.

But the actual answer to your question is whichever fish enhances your enjoyment of the game. That and blob fish.

 

[imnvs]

Let’s see- you’ll need one sturgeon pond for perfection and the lost bundle.

You only need a few caviar, so usually my first pond is a sturgeon pond. As soon as I have 3 caviar, however, I empty the pond and refill it with one of the other fish I listed above.

 

[hexnessie]

I'm not very fond of fish ponds because I tend to forget to harvest them everyday and thus lose profit.

I mostly only keep 1 pond of blobfish for the roe and pearls, and 1 pond initially for sturgeon (caviar), which is then replaced with whatever fish I need for cooking (usually cucumbers to make lucky lunches in bulk)

 

[FairyRing]

Octopi give Omni geodes so I had them to get the magic cowboy hat from the desert trader. Caviar sells for a lot so I keep lots of sturgeons. And my pufferfish pond so I never run out...

 

[Lew Zealand]

I'm not very fond of fish ponds because I tend to forget to harvest them everyday and thus lose profit.

I mostly only keep 1 pond of blobfish for the roe and pearls, and 1 pond initially for sturgeon (caviar), which is then replaced with whatever fish I need for cooking (usually cucumbers to make lucky lunches in bulk)

Actually you're already doing Fish Ponds half right. Because Fish Ponds reward the lazy in a very specific way!

Fish Ponds replace whatever is delivered by the Fish each day, so just ignore the Roe (OK except maybe for the Lava Eel) and let it turn over day after day until you get the Slime Egg/Omni Geodes/Prismatic Shard/Treayyzhhhhurrrre Chest you're looking for.

You must reward those greatest of efforts with Pearls and Shards, otherwise you'll just end up with the emptiness that is an armful of fish eggs dripping behind you as you trudge back to your Horse.

Oh no. I dropped them on the ground. Well they're dirty now, I'll leave 'em.

Darn.

 

[PoppyForPenny]

Since it takes the same space as an entire iridium sprinkler, fish ponds are not big money makers per tile. So you have to consider what rewards you really enjoy. I like the interesting and unique rewards- Willy's pearl for a full crab pond, the totems, geodes, even the woodskip with their acorns and hardwood is so cute! Their requests are fun too- blobfish sometimes want pizza and cookies, just like me! Hahahaha!

 

[Giant Octopodes]

So there's multiple ways to look at this. Here's a few that are worthwhile:

The Color Changers
Slimejacks (green), Void Salmons (purple), Lava Eels (red), and Super Cucumbers (lilac?) change the color of the water. I have one of each of these fish ponds for the colored water alone.

The Money Makers / XP generators for Roe
Lava Eel has by far the best G/Day and XP for Roe (assuming it's aged), at a whopping 1200. Blobfish are second at 764, Sturgeon, thanks to Caviar, is an easy third at 712.5. Ice Pips, tied for the second highest value fish, are all the way down at 229.6 thanks to inconsistent Roe production. Sea Urchins aren't bad (330/day) thanks to raw quantity, if you have the ability to process the Roe. Nothing else though is really in the same league as Blobfish and Sturgeon and more specifically Lava Eels when it comes to income and XP per day.

The Fish Farms
Midnight Carp, Tuna, Largemouth Bass, Flounder, Eel, Squid, Salmon, Sea Cucumbers, Rainbow Trout, Bream, Sardine, Carp, Sunfish, and most of the Crab Pot fish are used in recipes. If you want the respective recipes, they're fine choices. I like a Lobster fish pond early because otherwise they can be a pain to get from crab pots at only a 4% chance, and Lobster Bisque is very useful for a long lasting fishing buff. It's worth noting that of these fish, Eel, Squid, Salmon, Sea Cucumber, Rainbow Trout, and Sunfish are the ones available 2 seasons of the year or less otherwise and thus warrant particular consideration.

Rare Goods
You can also have a fish pond for what else beyond Roe it can produce. If you are comfortable manipulating RNG or looking up values, you can potentially make these otherwise rare / inconsistent drops far more consistent and plentiful, which may increase the value of pursuing the fish for them. Even without doing so, if you need something rare, these can help.

Spoiler: Spoiler Fish

The Ginger Island Fish all offer unique drops, such as Cinder Shards and Dragon Teeth for Stingrays and Bananas and Golden Coconuts for Blue Discus. The Lionfish can give you a Tiger Slime Egg.

Squid and Midnight Squid can give you plentiful Squid Ink. Lava Eels can give you Spicy Eels and Magma Geodes. The Void Salmon can give you a Void Egg. Stonefish and Ice Pips can give you regular and Frozen Geodes respectively, and both can give you diamonds. Octopi can give you Omni Geodes, Rainbow Trout can give Prismatic Shards, and Spook Fish can give Treasure Chests. This is far from the whole list, but those are some standouts for me.

The Only Way to Do This
Sturgeon in a fish pond is the Only way to get Caviar. Willy gives you special dialogue and a Pearl for getting a Fish Pond up to 10 Crabs, specifically. If you're after that special dialogue or Caviar, you've got exactly one option for achieving that, and that's a fish pond with the appropriate fish in it.

For me personally, I've got 6 - the 4 color changers, Sturgeon, and

Spoiler: a lategame fish

Stingrays

.

If I had to recommend just one very early game it'd definitely be Lobsters. The only reason I don't have one of those anymore because I switched to Mariner, and thus (thanks to having something like 100 crab pots in the Ocean) I can get more Lobster in large quantities whenever I want.

Lategame, if I could only recommend one fish pond, it'd definitely be Lava Eels. They're the most profitable, they have other useful rare goods, and they change the water's color. Certainly there's lots of good options, depending on what you need or want, but if you're not after a specific target you can never go wrong with Lava Eels.

 

[Magically Clueless]

Blobfish is my personal favorite because of the odd pearl or two...

 

[MissDandy]

I'm pretty superficial in that I have the ponds for aesthetic and also for the chance of good items. I made sure to have all the fish which affect the colour, as well as blob fish, squid and such. Not very profitable, but it really depends what you're after.

I'm usually too lazy to properly use any of the roe, so I don't mind if the ponds don't make me that much money at this point.

For that small, small, small, chance that you might get a prismatic shard (0.09%), go for the Rainbow Trout.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Let’s see- you’ll need one sturgeon pond for perfection and the lost bundle. Lava eels of course, but ice pips too; they are annoying to catch so I never sell them. Slime jacks for the slime eggs and green water. if you have red water (lava eels) and green water you might as well have a super cucumber and void salmon to complete the collection. The blob fish is great for its roe and other drops, but will probably get lonely surrounded by strange fish so you’ll need a midnight squid and spook fish too. One each of the Ginger Island fish. Oh a pond for the beautiful midnight carp. Then there’s a crab pond and an octopus pond and well, I might have a fish pond obsession.

Thank Yoba for fish tanks.

But the actual answer to your question is whichever fish enhances your enjoyment of the game. That and blob fish.

Technically you don't need the caviar for the missing bundle.

 

[Boo1972]

Technically you don't need the caviar for the missing bundle.

That’s true, but I never give away a prismatic shard if I can avoid it. Heck in my current save the dinosaur egg has decided it would rather be anywhere other than my farm so Dino mayo is out. Caviar is the low hanging fruit of the missing bundle.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

That’s true, but I never give away a prismatic shard if I can avoid it. Heck in my current save the dinosaur egg has decided it would rather be anywhere other than my farm so Dino mayo is out. Caviar is the low hanging fruit of the missing bundle.

Yeah, honeslty I usually hate having to go out of my way to fish a void salmon so I avoid that.
I find the shards too commonly and I have found 42 dino eggs from tilling fishing and mining on my file (none from my dino) which I keep in a little treasure chest with the rest of my "treasures"

 

[SuperChouette]

I resisted the blob fish my first game. Now I raise blob fish but I settle for not putting a sign on their pond so I can’t see their ugly faces.

 

[imnvs]

I resisted the blob fish my first game. Now I raise blob fish but I settle for not putting a sign on their pond so I can’t see their ugly faces.

I don't put signs on any of my ponds unless I want to know at a glance if there's enough cooking ingredients for me to bother fishing them out. See, my lava eels, blobfish, ice pips... once they're at max population, all I care about is what they produce. My midnight carp pond is for year-round, on-my-schedule ingredients. That one I want to know how many I have. I don't like letting it sit there are max population.

 

[Apples]

i like doing sturgeon but once i get a bit of iridium then ill typically go for the supercucumbers. They are the current fish that are the best in my eyes.

 

[SuperChouette]

once they're at max population, all I care about is what they produce.

I like to keep my fish populations at 9 and so I can sell more fish as well as get the produce.

 

[imnvs]

I like to keep my fish populations at 9 and so I can sell more fish as well as get the produce.

That feels like more work than I have the energy for.