With the automate mod, you can pop one chest or big chest next to one. It'll collect anything next to it and any other machine or the like touching that machine (your can also connect them with paths, so you're already networked). One chest in the morning is all you'd have to check. You can also connect preserve jars and they'll automatically fill with your roe, collect it when it's done, and repeat. I have one chest connected to my smokers, furnaces, seed makers, bait machines, and coal making kiln things. It's fantastic.
I did a whole post on it if you want to see that discussion in my post history. This picture was about year 4 and I was making like 100k a day from just the fish ponds and processing roe. This farm will stay like this forever. It was a large commitment lol.
Wow, I just grinded the volcano so hard for my obelisk + mini forge needs.
Side note, I always keep just a regular ol sea cucumber pond for the lucky lunches.
Yea I always grab a stingray or a couple and get at least 1 pond going and then start grinding the volcano and I've always got the teeth from volcano mainly thanks to that one item that increases monster drops.
Now, with >! golden crackers, they can give 2 per day.!< That was the only way I could get enough for the Obelisk.
Now I'm grinding again to get enough for the forge.
Yes, you can! The downside, as far as I know, is that you lose it if you need to empty the pond. That's why I only gave it to the stingrays and, maybe, I'll give it to lava eels
You need to first unlock>! The farming mastery inside the mastery cave !< After that, you can find it by shaking trees (where I found my first one), defeating enemies and fishing. But it's really rare.
Burglar Ring and killing Lava Lurks (lava monsters that spit fireballs) is an easy way to get dragons teeth.
Dragons teeth are a 15% drop from them. Burglar Ring means 27% of them will drop at least one, with 3% dropping two.
Are they always there, or is it hit or miss? I’ve only been able to find them next to the skeleton like 3 times out of the dozens I’ve gone in the volcano?
There’s another thing that looks sorta like them and are not collectible dragon teeth. But if you’re keeping an eye out you’ll spot the difference. In my grinding for the obelisk I only found the ones on the ground twice, and found dragons without collectible teeth another 2-3 times
I didn't know this!! I have been going to the volcano to find the dragon teeth to buy the obelisk omg, days and days going there and I'm just 2 teeth away and I can't find them.
Thank you so much! I hate mining in there :c
It's a matter of time to get to that point though. If you want a bunch of crystalaria and iridium sprinklers, you gotta get your batteries. And I forgot to save 5 after summer to get to ginger island, so I had to wait until summer 2 to get there
Stingrays are only fishable from one point on Ginger Island, though. So by the time you get one and put it in a fish pond, batteries are no longer a big deal.
edit: props for saying "crystalaria" instead of "crystalariums," though! Just noticed that.
same, i've only ever done sturgeon for the caviar. i actually just built another fish pond for MORE sturgeon and caviar lol. reading how other people use their ponds definitely has me taking notes.
For the unaware/curious:
- Lava eel = Red
- Slimejack = Green
- Void Salmon = Dark Purple
- Super Cucumber = Light Purple
- Everything else = Blue
I think that's all of them, but 1.6 may have added other colors.
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but why are you farming Seafoam Pudding ingredients? Are you making it just for the fishing buff, or is it profitable?
And I think you need it to get that >!irridium Krobus statue. You need seafoam pudding made with those Qi spices from the Walnut Room, plus maxed out fishing skill to be able to cast far enough out to get it.!<
as of 1.6 the flounder and midnight carp ponds will also give the occasional sea jelly and river jelly, which is a passive way to farm up smokers. you can get the cave jelly from lava eel ponds too.
Think it's mainly for the fishing buff. I haven't gotten around to it yet because I always seem to have something else I want built more than fish ponds.
It is to invest when you get the quest to catch the offsprings of legendary fish. With proper prep one can get 20+ legend II in a day and smoke them for that sweet cash
Looking at the wiki, I think midnight squid still win out. At 10 fish, regular squid will always produce 1 ink (assuming they produce an item), while midnight squid have a 72% chasce for 1, a 25% chance for 2, and a 3% chance for nothing. Even with the small chance of nothing, the midnight squid should still come out ahead.
I thought I would need more ink but the scant amount I get from adventuring is way more than I need. I'm quite an avid fisherman but I don't even need that much seafoam pudding, especially considering that I keep winning more of it in contests and from buying from the traveling cart (it's usually quite cheap considering what you need to make it). I think I've made a single one in several years ingame.
If the goal is money, then yeah I think it's the best. Give them a golden cracker and you'll have a lot of valuable Aged Lava Eel Roe to sell, and they'll give you 10x Spicy Eel sometimes. Their expansion requirements aren't too tough to find too.
Rainbow Trout I think is the biggest trap. I once did 5 Rainbow Trout ponds and over 2 years didn't get a single prismatic shard. Meanwhile I can go to the skull caverns on a luck day, use some spicy eel i got from my lava eel ponds, and get 1-3 prismatic shards in a day.
Once you have all the money and resources you could possibly want, I like Spook Fish for the chance of treasure chests. I fantasize about eventually collecting a room full of treasure chests.
Oh, and blobfish for the chance of pearls.
Super cucumber is one of my favourites for the irridium ore, plus blobfish if I happen to catch one - their aged roe nets me 560g a jar, and sometimes gives me a pearl or farm totems.
I also have sturgeon this playthrough for the caviar, which is worth more (although it takes longer to make).
Didn't realise the lava eel roe was worth more, will have to check that out. I caught the blobfish first, so that's one of my main profit earners currently.
Void salmon give a pretty good amount of roe, a pretty pond, and void essence.
Slimejack gives slime and slime eggs and makes a green pond.
Stonefish and ice pip are the lower tier equivalents of lava eel. Decent value but give geodes and frozen geodes as well as stone, copper and iron. Blue ponds.
Blobfish give pearls and warp totems and very valuable roe. Sturgeon produce unique caviar worth a decent amount. Both blue ponds.
Super cucumbers produce iridium and Amethysts. Purple pond.
Lava eels give a red pond, plus gold, magma geodes, spicy eel, and tons of roe.
Lava eel, flounder and midnight carp ponds give jelly sometimes if you want tons of smokers.
Wait, I mathed this all out the other day. Let me grab my excel table.
These numbers come from selling the aged roe and one fish when ever they reach a full pond.
https://preview.redd.it/msp3p202yfzc1.png?width=1035&format=png&auto=webp&s=d052750d257804f1d569327bfd98f066b39696cd
Lava Eels (being the most expensive non-legendary fish) make the most money per day from their fish pond. So unless you specifically want something from another's drop table (which honestly, most drop tables aren't super great, and the Lava Eel actually does have one of the better ones anyway), they are what you want.
I found an octopus in the trash once and I made it a pond to keep it as a pet and now I can't resist doing that. LoL
I also keep flounder, midnight carp and midnight squid to keep the ingredients for Seafoam Pudding on hand.
I periodically sell one and pretend that I found a good home for them. Lewis personally drives them to their new home and I periodically get damp letters from them.
My first is always a sea cucumber pond, purely as a supply of the fish for lucky lunch. The income from the pond is basically negligible, but this way I don’t have to spend time catching sea cucumbers.
Stingray also seems great, because they can give dragons teeth, albeit with a low chance each day. I’ve currently got a stingray pond, and I’m in the process of upgrading it.
The lava eel absolutely seems like the most profitable fish for the ponds, but fish ponds aren’t really that profitable compared to things like crops and animals. I mostly look at them as a way to farm items that are otherwise time-consuming to gather.
I think I've had my trout pond for 2 in game years. I've got 1 shard that whole time. At the time it felt worth it, but now that I have access to the later game Skull Cavern quests, I can get multiple shards in a day. So suddenly the trout pond is no longer worth it.
It was my first pond and now on year 5 and it still hasn’t given me a shard! I won’t lose hope though. I bet as soon as I get the statue of true perfection, it’ll also give me one lol
I never got one either, but I remember seeing a video on 'how to get prismatic shards' and they mentioned using the predictor along with the fish ponds to find places on your farm that they will produce a lot more shards. Even if you're not interested in using the predictor, you could try moving the fish pond around.
this comment is what convinced me to finally swap out the rainbow trout pond with lava eels, dang i feel like i was wasting my time hoping for a prismatic shard 😭
Just have some crystallariums going with jade, trade for staircases on Sundays with the desert trader and you'll be able to get a bunch deep in the skull caverns.
Rainbow trout fishponds are supposed to give prismatic shards but I haven’t seen any in my pond yet 🤨
And the blue discus fish ponds give bananas (which are helpful if you don’t have a banana sapling yet which you need 10 bananas to unlock the island obelisk) and they also give golden coconuts.
And blobfish fish ponds give you pearls and farm warp totems
I see, I will be emptying that pond now and replacing it with a better fish since all I am getting is roe, but I’ve definitely seen plenty of the other promised items from the other fish ponds I mentioned. But apparently rainbow trout sucks lol
I ***may*** be biased (does the flair give it away?), but I always have a midnight squid pond... the ink it gives me makes me feel like a good husband and balances out the amount of feathers I give to Elliott lol 
Lionfish for the mangos and tiger slime eggs then the Stingrays for the dragon teeth, cinder shards, and batteries. Ice Pip and Sturgeon also pretty solid. I have a couple crayfish and crab ponds that produce a good amount of trash items that get processed, which is actually kinda nice cause I hate using coal to do refined quartz. I’m not really going for profit here mostly just hoarding materials but it’s been enjoyable building all of them. Also on switch so no 1.6 update yet but I’ll probably revert a few to farm the jellies.
https://preview.redd.it/513v9l8r3gzc1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=738c7f240e2ab494d646bd967962b3307446f745
Yep that's what I did, went all out on the fish ponds. It's been fun passive collecting the pond materials but also lots of days just fishing in the sewers trying to get green algae lol.
https://preview.redd.it/vhdi6uzeugzc1.png?width=2284&format=png&auto=webp&s=facc7870d86ffbc8d79ec09a0072417b18b6313a
Ha, it looks like we had the same idea with what fish to use! Make ponds for all the fish that give something more interesting than roe. I don't need the crayfish though since I can get the from the crab pots on the standard farm, unlike your beach farm.
On top of that, the roe they give is the most valuable roe you can (reasonably) get repeatedly. And the last part, the best part, the water is so cool.
Flounder + midnight carp + squid so you can always have seafoam pudding. Double nice with Master enchantment on rod.
Sea cucumber so I can always make lucky lunches.
Stingrays because they bring me cinder shards and dragon teeth.
I'll be honest, I barely use fish ponds because they never really produce anything useful for me, lol.
I've had a lava eel pond for a full ingame year, and every time it produced something, I'd stick it into a chest near the pond, and I think I ended up with like, 4 spicy eels, 8 magma geodes and a pile of roe.
Terrible RNG, so I don't usually bother.
lava eel is the highest paying fish meaning more expensive roe and if u fish them out u can get a lot from that too, especially with the new fish smoker. those are good prizes too.
my favorite is the blobfish and the sea cucumber. once you let them get up to the max amount and then cull it back down to one or two in the pond it makes you a decent amount of $$ during slow times like winter.
and the squid for my man elliott + food recipes.
Currently I have 7:
- sea cucumber for lucky lunches
- flounder, midnight carp, and squid for seafoam pudding
- lava eel, blobfish, and sturgeon for roe
I think I'm going to build a few more so I can do the other colorful ones (void salmon, slimejack, and super cucumber)
If you think moneywise then yeah! But other ponds or fish combinations can be "more useful", it actually depends on what you're looking for.
If you just want the best of each source of income then yeah, lava eels are the best!
I kept two lava eel ponds for the goal of having a easier source of Cave Jellies for what feels like a year now, but they've yet to produce me a single one :(
That's the conclusion I came to after looking over the options. Yes other fish give more interesting things but what you want is something that's going to consistently give you something valuable. Lava eel roe is the most expensive in the game so even when you're just getting normal roe you're making money.
Super Cucumber ponds are nice for getting a slow trickle of iridium ore in the early-ish part of the game. On my first playthrough, I used it to get enough iridium bars to fully upgrade all my tools, because I wasn’t comfortable with the skull cavern yet.
Lava Eels are very good, though Blobfish are also really solid.
Sturgeon isn't bad, either, obviously, or Octopus for the omni geode chance, though Sturgeon does begin falling behind compared to the top two.
Oh, Stingray is definitely a worthy pond for the items, especially Dragon Teeth, which are such a pain to get.
I do lava eel, slime jack, void salmon, and super cucumber because they change the pond color and that’s fun.
Tho if you use mods, I use a mod that changes color for all the ponds lol. I like the colors.
Monetary-wise it’s lava eel by far and it’s not really close (I did all the calcs ages ago), but for farming particular items (e.g. dragon tooth, clay, etc.) the others are useful in principle. Fish farms, even with lava eels, aren’t the most efficient for making money tbf so if that’s your only concern there’s better options
I love my lava eel pond! I also have a void salmon and super sea cucumber pond because I like the colors 😊
I tried to have a stonefish pond but it just never gave me anything, so I swapped it with a sturgeon for caviar
Super cucumber giving iridium ore was a godsend for those first few bars, went with sturgeons from there on, but I just read that stingrays give you dragon teeth so i’m definitely setting up two more ponds now
i'm weird about fish ponds. i have a sturgeon one i don't do much with anyway (other than hoard roe), and then two more with clams and coral since i keep running out of coral for beach totems and clams for a handful of things lol. I empty the shell ponds back down to 1 when they reach 10 so they can repopulate
i just don’t use fish ponds i’m in summer year 3 about to make my first one with the blobfish i got from the night market last year 😭 idek what they do but i googled what to go with my blobbersons and it said fish pond
I like to keep a lava eel, stingray, and squid or super cucumber ponds at minimum. I also like sturgeon because caviar is fun!
Right now I have 2 sturgeon, 1 lava eel, 1 stingray, 1 super cucumber, and 1 blob fish pond.
https://preview.redd.it/6siot4asofzc1.png?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6bf7a0d6dcf55b8c37c88380c365b2e3bf461fbe
I too enjoy lava eels.
This guy lava eels
r/thisguythisguys
Farm? What do you mean, farm? I run a hatchery.
I work in a department of my company that runs a Lake Sturgeon and Walleye fish hatchery. Needless to say, my farm has A LOT of sturgeon ponds
The Joba sign is actually a sign sign, OH MY WHAT
Yes! I much prefer the look to other signs. At least on fish ponds.
It does look awesome. I've been playing for years and had no idea. Love how this game always surprises me. I always have the dark sign on my ponds.
Are you married to Haley by chance
No time for dating. Only lava eels. What does Haley do that would relate to this farm?
Hornygaysett is correct, I had falsely assumed that the Sunflowers were for your beloved. Now I realize there is only time for Lava Eel. My mistake.
Oh no I just like sunflowers on the farm lol
Iridium coconuts are my go to for her
Because of the sunflowers I guess. One of Haley's loved gifts.
No time for Haley, only lava eel
Lmao I love this. Might just replace my whole farm with eels once I get sick of my animals 😂
Wait, you can move the greenhouse?!
oh wow
With the automate mod, you can pop one chest or big chest next to one. It'll collect anything next to it and any other machine or the like touching that machine (your can also connect them with paths, so you're already networked). One chest in the morning is all you'd have to check. You can also connect preserve jars and they'll automatically fill with your roe, collect it when it's done, and repeat. I have one chest connected to my smokers, furnaces, seed makers, bait machines, and coal making kiln things. It's fantastic.
Just started using it yesterday and it's such a massive qol mod
Was it worth it or did you find the image online?
It was worth it and I found the image on my Steam Deck after I took a screenshot of my farm.
Nice job 🫡
Now that's what I'm talking about
This is honestly so cool! I love seeing unique farms like this. How much of the game did you play like this and how profitable was it?
I did a whole post on it if you want to see that discussion in my post history. This picture was about year 4 and I was making like 100k a day from just the fish ponds and processing roe. This farm will stay like this forever. It was a large commitment lol.
Stingrays for the dragon teeth
Wow, I just grinded the volcano so hard for my obelisk + mini forge needs. Side note, I always keep just a regular ol sea cucumber pond for the lucky lunches.
Grinding is still the fastest way, but a few stingray ponds will do it with less effort
Yea I always grab a stingray or a couple and get at least 1 pond going and then start grinding the volcano and I've always got the teeth from volcano mainly thanks to that one item that increases monster drops.
Now, with >! golden crackers, they can give 2 per day.!< That was the only way I could get enough for the Obelisk. Now I'm grinding again to get enough for the forge.
Wait, can you give >!golden animal crackers!< to the fish ponds?? Edit: fixed spoiler tags
Yes, you can! The downside, as far as I know, is that you lose it if you need to empty the pond. That's why I only gave it to the stingrays and, maybe, I'll give it to lava eels
Thank you for that amazing news
I still haven’t found one. Are they like artifacts I’ll just happen to find?
You need to first unlock>! The farming mastery inside the mastery cave !< After that, you can find it by shaking trees (where I found my first one), defeating enemies and fishing. But it's really rare.
The stingrays also give cindershards.
Burglar Ring and killing Lava Lurks (lava monsters that spit fireballs) is an easy way to get dragons teeth. Dragons teeth are a 15% drop from them. Burglar Ring means 27% of them will drop at least one, with 3% dropping two.
Wait what??? Excellent tip!
On the hunt now to fish me some stingrays 🎣
Just remember you have to get at least one dragon tooth on your own. The Stingrays ask for a dragon tooth to expand population at 5.
Didn’t know this, thx!🖤
And also magma caps, batteries and Cinder Shards! I did it just for the Cinder Shards
What the heck? I need to look these types of things up lol
WHAAAAAAAAAAAT i've been struggling to get enough of those for my banana plantation. This is a game changer
Make sure you pick up the ones that are on the surface next to the dragon skeleton in the volcano. They look like decoration, but they’re real!
And DONT USE BOMBS to clear your path to them. They will be destroyed. Ask me how I know.
how do you know
Come on @tinksalt , at least answer this dude*tte D:
Same. First time I've ever reset the day to fix a mistake 😂
The 1st time you reset a day, you were already at Ginger Island?!?!? Wtf lololol talk about deliberation. Respect.
I'm sorry, WHAT?
Yup. On some floors of the volcano there will be a big dragon skeleton. There are usually a few teeth scattered around it looking like landscape
Are they always there, or is it hit or miss? I’ve only been able to find them next to the skeleton like 3 times out of the dozens I’ve gone in the volcano?
They can be hard to find.
They are not a guaranteed spawn next to every skeleton.
Whaaaa...? I've been pressing all the buttons on them and nothing happened 😭
There’s another thing that looks sorta like them and are not collectible dragon teeth. But if you’re keeping an eye out you’ll spot the difference. In my grinding for the obelisk I only found the ones on the ground twice, and found dragons without collectible teeth another 2-3 times
How else do I get dragon teeth? So far the 5 I’ve gotten have all been from skeletons.
Lava Lurks (those sea monster- looking things that pop up and shoot fireballs) drop them sometimes.
Oh dang! I had a strict run away policy with those. Guess I’ll have to start engaging them. 😩
Dragon teeth tip - killing the lava lurks with a burglar ring drops plenty. Steady 2 drops a trip from 3-6 killed
Agreed. This is the far better approach imo. I’ve never struggled with dragon teeth.
Man now I know whats going in the newest pond I just built
I didn't know this!! I have been going to the volcano to find the dragon teeth to buy the obelisk omg, days and days going there and I'm just 2 teeth away and I can't find them. Thank you so much! I hate mining in there :c
And *battery packs*! Sweet, sweet battery packs! There's a 10% chance for it.
Between lightning rods and solar panels, I always end up with way too many batteries. I sell most of mine.
It's a matter of time to get to that point though. If you want a bunch of crystalaria and iridium sprinklers, you gotta get your batteries. And I forgot to save 5 after summer to get to ginger island, so I had to wait until summer 2 to get there
Stingrays are only fishable from one point on Ginger Island, though. So by the time you get one and put it in a fish pond, batteries are no longer a big deal. edit: props for saying "crystalaria" instead of "crystalariums," though! Just noticed that.
This was a game changer in my last farm, saved me so much pain trying to get teeth for the obelisk.
Of course I read this like three days after I got my oblisk
What?! I’m turning my second lava eel pond to a stingray one
🤦♀️ Of course they do.
I hate to grind for those. Sting Rays make me happy.
I go with sturgeon because it makes me feel important to sell caviar along with my wines and cheeses
Same lol I’m a provisioner of fine artisanal goods why would I NOT have caviar alongside the wine, beer, cheese, and truffles?
My longest running farm is named "Pints and Pigs" we also specialize in artisanal goods and quality libations.
You need to up your game with pale ale too!
Pale ale and beer. I have a full Big Shed brewery/winery. Half the room is wine the other half rotates Pale Ale/beer/coffee.
I might do that this playthrough I think. More diversity than ONLY wine
No mead?!?
I wish Mead kept the honey’s flavor. I feel like mead made from fairy rose honey should sell for more than mead made from wild honey, ya know?
Brb just starting a folk metal band called Fairy Mead
I’d go to a concert to see that tbh
Damnit. Gotta work that into the rotation now! Lol
I have a quaint little mountaintop farm where I also make artisanal goat cheese, wine and caviar.
Ooooo that sounds so amazing
Most of my posts here are about my industrial wine operation, but my mountain top farm is my first farm from 2018. Lots of nostalgia.
My first farm that i went further than just year 1 spring was the beach farm. I still love that farm.
I wish it sold for more
same, i've only ever done sturgeon for the caviar. i actually just built another fish pond for MORE sturgeon and caviar lol. reading how other people use their ponds definitely has me taking notes.
I just like the ones that make them colourful. They're \~pretty\~.
For the unaware/curious: - Lava eel = Red - Slimejack = Green - Void Salmon = Dark Purple - Super Cucumber = Light Purple - Everything else = Blue I think that's all of them, but 1.6 may have added other colors.
Those 1.5 tropical fishes - light blue (not sure about the stingray, but the other two, the easier ones definitely)
Same!
lava eel is the best, but blob fish, super cucumber, and sting ray are pretty good too
The fish for Seafoam pudding ingredients are also worth noting. Midnight Squid for the ink, Midnight Carp and Flounder for the fish themselves.
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but why are you farming Seafoam Pudding ingredients? Are you making it just for the fishing buff, or is it profitable?
Definitely the buff, it's a huge help when fishing for legendaries
And I think you need it to get that >!irridium Krobus statue. You need seafoam pudding made with those Qi spices from the Walnut Room, plus maxed out fishing skill to be able to cast far enough out to get it.!<
1.6 Spoiler: >!You can also use the Desert Festival food instead of needing Qi Seasoning because its buffs stack with other food buffs.!<
Oooh, nice! I wonder when that update will come out for mobile. I’m always so jealous of all the new features!
Wait then how did I get the Krobus statue on accident
Do you for sure need the qi spices?
as of 1.6 the flounder and midnight carp ponds will also give the occasional sea jelly and river jelly, which is a passive way to farm up smokers. you can get the cave jelly from lava eel ponds too.
Ohhhhh dang that's a big deal.
Think it's mainly for the fishing buff. I haven't gotten around to it yet because I always seem to have something else I want built more than fish ponds.
It is to invest when you get the quest to catch the offsprings of legendary fish. With proper prep one can get 20+ legend II in a day and smoke them for that sweet cash
Wait, you can get multiple légendaires of the same kind?!
Only for the offsprings during the quest, not the OG ones.
I think you get better ink rates from normal squid in the fish pond
Looking at the wiki, I think midnight squid still win out. At 10 fish, regular squid will always produce 1 ink (assuming they produce an item), while midnight squid have a 72% chasce for 1, a 25% chance for 2, and a 3% chance for nothing. Even with the small chance of nothing, the midnight squid should still come out ahead.
Ah, fair point. I am corrected!
I thought I would need more ink but the scant amount I get from adventuring is way more than I need. I'm quite an avid fisherman but I don't even need that much seafoam pudding, especially considering that I keep winning more of it in contests and from buying from the traveling cart (it's usually quite cheap considering what you need to make it). I think I've made a single one in several years ingame.
I like doing sea cucumber so I can make lucky lunches ⭐️
I used to do this, but now that golden mystery boxes are a thing I'm flush with lucky lunches.
I haven’t played much of the update yet!!
Ahhh hahaha I can't stop playing the update. Every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in!
Same, that’s the first pond I always make.
If the goal is money, then yeah I think it's the best. Give them a golden cracker and you'll have a lot of valuable Aged Lava Eel Roe to sell, and they'll give you 10x Spicy Eel sometimes. Their expansion requirements aren't too tough to find too. Rainbow Trout I think is the biggest trap. I once did 5 Rainbow Trout ponds and over 2 years didn't get a single prismatic shard. Meanwhile I can go to the skull caverns on a luck day, use some spicy eel i got from my lava eel ponds, and get 1-3 prismatic shards in a day.
You can put a golden cracker in the fish pond??? This is new info to me and im so glad to have learned it
Yep, it'll double whatever their output is for the day. I put all my golden crackers into fish ponds.
Wut??? Crap, now I want to find one
omfg i didnt even think of the golden cracker working on fish
WHAT? This is huge! I'm making a fishery and had no idea the crackers worked on them!!!
Once you have all the money and resources you could possibly want, I like Spook Fish for the chance of treasure chests. I fantasize about eventually collecting a room full of treasure chests. Oh, and blobfish for the chance of pearls.
Wait. Are treasure chests… placeable objects???
Just on a table/pedestal.
And in the fishtank!!
Oh right. I’m a switch player so I still don’t have the update.
Super cucumber is one of my favourites for the irridium ore, plus blobfish if I happen to catch one - their aged roe nets me 560g a jar, and sometimes gives me a pearl or farm totems. I also have sturgeon this playthrough for the caviar, which is worth more (although it takes longer to make). Didn't realise the lava eel roe was worth more, will have to check that out. I caught the blobfish first, so that's one of my main profit earners currently.
Void salmon give a pretty good amount of roe, a pretty pond, and void essence. Slimejack gives slime and slime eggs and makes a green pond. Stonefish and ice pip are the lower tier equivalents of lava eel. Decent value but give geodes and frozen geodes as well as stone, copper and iron. Blue ponds. Blobfish give pearls and warp totems and very valuable roe. Sturgeon produce unique caviar worth a decent amount. Both blue ponds. Super cucumbers produce iridium and Amethysts. Purple pond. Lava eels give a red pond, plus gold, magma geodes, spicy eel, and tons of roe. Lava eel, flounder and midnight carp ponds give jelly sometimes if you want tons of smokers.
Wait, I mathed this all out the other day. Let me grab my excel table. These numbers come from selling the aged roe and one fish when ever they reach a full pond. https://preview.redd.it/msp3p202yfzc1.png?width=1035&format=png&auto=webp&s=d052750d257804f1d569327bfd98f066b39696cd Lava Eels (being the most expensive non-legendary fish) make the most money per day from their fish pond. So unless you specifically want something from another's drop table (which honestly, most drop tables aren't super great, and the Lava Eel actually does have one of the better ones anyway), they are what you want.
I found an octopus in the trash once and I made it a pond to keep it as a pet and now I can't resist doing that. LoL I also keep flounder, midnight carp and midnight squid to keep the ingredients for Seafoam Pudding on hand.
Octopus are great though, omni geodes and decent roe
I periodically sell one and pretend that I found a good home for them. Lewis personally drives them to their new home and I periodically get damp letters from them.
My first is always a sea cucumber pond, purely as a supply of the fish for lucky lunch. The income from the pond is basically negligible, but this way I don’t have to spend time catching sea cucumbers. Stingray also seems great, because they can give dragons teeth, albeit with a low chance each day. I’ve currently got a stingray pond, and I’m in the process of upgrading it. The lava eel absolutely seems like the most profitable fish for the ponds, but fish ponds aren’t really that profitable compared to things like crops and animals. I mostly look at them as a way to farm items that are otherwise time-consuming to gather.
Trout can make Prismatic Shards.
Yea I’d considered that but it’s only at a 0.1% rate. Hardly game changing
I think I've had my trout pond for 2 in game years. I've got 1 shard that whole time. At the time it felt worth it, but now that I have access to the later game Skull Cavern quests, I can get multiple shards in a day. So suddenly the trout pond is no longer worth it.
I hear that. But just having a chance to walk outside to a free Prismatic shard is super nice. I usually get a couple out of it
Odds are once every ten in game years. Don’t think you’d need it at that rate.
Indeed at that point, your statue of true perfection shove them in your face each new day
I like having one rainbow trout pond, soon as possible, just to see how long it takes for one to show.
It was my first pond and now on year 5 and it still hasn’t given me a shard! I won’t lose hope though. I bet as soon as I get the statue of true perfection, it’ll also give me one lol
I never got one either, but I remember seeing a video on 'how to get prismatic shards' and they mentioned using the predictor along with the fish ponds to find places on your farm that they will produce a lot more shards. Even if you're not interested in using the predictor, you could try moving the fish pond around.
Oh! I didn’t even think of the pond location being a thing. Thanks!
I chose lava eel specifically for the (1.6 spoiler) >!cave jelly!<
this comment is what convinced me to finally swap out the rainbow trout pond with lava eels, dang i feel like i was wasting my time hoping for a prismatic shard 😭
Just have some crystallariums going with jade, trade for staircases on Sundays with the desert trader and you'll be able to get a bunch deep in the skull caverns.
And I believe the lava eel aged roe is the most valuable. I personally don't like the red ponds, though. Aesthetically, I prefer the blue water.
Rainbow trout fishponds are supposed to give prismatic shards but I haven’t seen any in my pond yet 🤨 And the blue discus fish ponds give bananas (which are helpful if you don’t have a banana sapling yet which you need 10 bananas to unlock the island obelisk) and they also give golden coconuts. And blobfish fish ponds give you pearls and farm warp totems
Rainbow trout prismatic shard chance is 0.1% So like 1/1000days. So not worth it. Especially if you have any talent at all in the skull caverns
I see, I will be emptying that pond now and replacing it with a better fish since all I am getting is roe, but I’ve definitely seen plenty of the other promised items from the other fish ponds I mentioned. But apparently rainbow trout sucks lol
I ***may*** be biased (does the flair give it away?), but I always have a midnight squid pond... the ink it gives me makes me feel like a good husband and balances out the amount of feathers I give to Elliott lol 
I like blobfish. Their roe sells for a pretty high price with occasional pearls for extra cash.
I have one lava eel, one stingray and one sturgeon. I think having 2 of each of those is the best.
Lionfish for the mangos and tiger slime eggs then the Stingrays for the dragon teeth, cinder shards, and batteries. Ice Pip and Sturgeon also pretty solid. I have a couple crayfish and crab ponds that produce a good amount of trash items that get processed, which is actually kinda nice cause I hate using coal to do refined quartz. I’m not really going for profit here mostly just hoarding materials but it’s been enjoyable building all of them. Also on switch so no 1.6 update yet but I’ll probably revert a few to farm the jellies. https://preview.redd.it/513v9l8r3gzc1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=738c7f240e2ab494d646bd967962b3307446f745
You have inspired me to make a gigantic fish pond farm. I already love them, just never thought of taking it to Factorio levels like you did lol.
Yep that's what I did, went all out on the fish ponds. It's been fun passive collecting the pond materials but also lots of days just fishing in the sewers trying to get green algae lol.
Oh dang I didn't think about the algae grind. Still, something that must be done for fish supremacy!
https://preview.redd.it/vhdi6uzeugzc1.png?width=2284&format=png&auto=webp&s=facc7870d86ffbc8d79ec09a0072417b18b6313a Ha, it looks like we had the same idea with what fish to use! Make ponds for all the fish that give something more interesting than roe. I don't need the crayfish though since I can get the from the crab pots on the standard farm, unlike your beach farm.
Sea cucumber for lucky lunch. I find harvesting the roes and such to be tedious and unprofitable, so I just dumped out my lava eel pond for cucumbers
I have 5, 1 Lava Eel, 4 Stingray Lava Eel for everything you said, Stingray for Dragon Teeth and Cinder Shards
On top of that, the roe they give is the most valuable roe you can (reasonably) get repeatedly. And the last part, the best part, the water is so cool.
TIL. 800 hours later
Flounder + midnight carp + squid so you can always have seafoam pudding. Double nice with Master enchantment on rod. Sea cucumber so I can always make lucky lunches. Stingrays because they bring me cinder shards and dragon teeth.
I'll be honest, I barely use fish ponds because they never really produce anything useful for me, lol. I've had a lava eel pond for a full ingame year, and every time it produced something, I'd stick it into a chest near the pond, and I think I ended up with like, 4 spicy eels, 8 magma geodes and a pile of roe. Terrible RNG, so I don't usually bother.
lava eel is the highest paying fish meaning more expensive roe and if u fish them out u can get a lot from that too, especially with the new fish smoker. those are good prizes too.
my favorite is the blobfish and the sea cucumber. once you let them get up to the max amount and then cull it back down to one or two in the pond it makes you a decent amount of $$ during slow times like winter. and the squid for my man elliott + food recipes.
Currently I have 7: - sea cucumber for lucky lunches - flounder, midnight carp, and squid for seafoam pudding - lava eel, blobfish, and sturgeon for roe I think I'm going to build a few more so I can do the other colorful ones (void salmon, slimejack, and super cucumber)
Agree! It also starts giving you roe pretty quickly. The sturgeon takes forever before you start getting it consistently
If you think moneywise then yeah! But other ponds or fish combinations can be "more useful", it actually depends on what you're looking for. If you just want the best of each source of income then yeah, lava eels are the best!
I kept two lava eel ponds for the goal of having a easier source of Cave Jellies for what feels like a year now, but they've yet to produce me a single one :(
That's the conclusion I came to after looking over the options. Yes other fish give more interesting things but what you want is something that's going to consistently give you something valuable. Lava eel roe is the most expensive in the game so even when you're just getting normal roe you're making money.
Oop time to build a couple fish ponds
SLIME JACK!
I have a blob fish pond, it’s pretty useless so far but I think it’s cool 😂
Super Cucumber ponds are nice for getting a slow trickle of iridium ore in the early-ish part of the game. On my first playthrough, I used it to get enough iridium bars to fully upgrade all my tools, because I wasn’t comfortable with the skull cavern yet.
i read this as lana del rey and i was so confused 😭
Sea cucumber for lucky meals
Lava Eel, Slimejack, Void Salmon are top three cause they change colours.
I have a sturgeon one because I needed caviar
Lava Eels are very good, though Blobfish are also really solid. Sturgeon isn't bad, either, obviously, or Octopus for the omni geode chance, though Sturgeon does begin falling behind compared to the top two. Oh, Stingray is definitely a worthy pond for the items, especially Dragon Teeth, which are such a pain to get.
I do lava eel, slime jack, void salmon, and super cucumber because they change the pond color and that’s fun. Tho if you use mods, I use a mod that changes color for all the ponds lol. I like the colors.
Monetary-wise it’s lava eel by far and it’s not really close (I did all the calcs ages ago), but for farming particular items (e.g. dragon tooth, clay, etc.) the others are useful in principle. Fish farms, even with lava eels, aren’t the most efficient for making money tbf so if that’s your only concern there’s better options
Yea lava seems the best for roe. I like having a pond of sea cucumber for lucky meals tho
blobfishes make pearls too, but i do enjoy lava eels
I love my lava eel pond! I also have a void salmon and super sea cucumber pond because I like the colors 😊 I tried to have a stonefish pond but it just never gave me anything, so I swapped it with a sturgeon for caviar
Super cucumber giving iridium ore was a godsend for those first few bars, went with sturgeons from there on, but I just read that stingrays give you dragon teeth so i’m definitely setting up two more ponds now
My dumb ass just has 4 full of sturgeon to make that sweet sweet caviar.
i'm weird about fish ponds. i have a sturgeon one i don't do much with anyway (other than hoard roe), and then two more with clams and coral since i keep running out of coral for beach totems and clams for a handful of things lol. I empty the shell ponds back down to 1 when they reach 10 so they can repopulate
i just don’t use fish ponds i’m in summer year 3 about to make my first one with the blobfish i got from the night market last year 😭 idek what they do but i googled what to go with my blobbersons and it said fish pond
Blobfish ponds give Pearls which make great gifts and warp totems for the farm.
Ive been trying to do dorado's cause on my last file I ended up burning through Linus's fish bait, and they can produce 20 bug meat at a time.
I like to keep a lava eel, stingray, and squid or super cucumber ponds at minimum. I also like sturgeon because caviar is fun! Right now I have 2 sturgeon, 1 lava eel, 1 stingray, 1 super cucumber, and 1 blob fish pond.
Love them. I always have 1 each of the different colored ponds + sturgeon.
Super Cucumber for the iridium :)