Stardew Valley – Fish Ponds: Why and What?

The Bad

Almost everything you build on the farm is there to make you money. The fish pond is not. The most expensive item a fish pond will give you, Aged Lava Eel Roe, has a base price of 760 and that’s after a Preserves Jar gets done with it. A full lava eel pond averages 0.97563091 lava eel roe per day. That’s an average of 741 gold per day.

A fish pond is a 5×5 square. That’s an iridium sprinkler and all its crops. That’s smaller than a chicken coop. Both give more reliable gold output.

A fish pond is cheap to build. But it has iterating costs. Not just gold, specific items that must be provided. That means questing and trusting to luck. Average gold per day of a lava eel pond caps at 486 until you hand it an iridium bar.

So what is a fish pond bad at? A fish pond is bad at making you money. A fish pond is bad at making early gains. A fish pond is bad at land management.

The Good

So why do we want a fish pond?

Achievements. You want full shipment? You’ll need roe, and stuff made from the right kinds of roe.

Easy fish. Catching a fish from a pond is 100% automatically successful. Every fish you pull out of a pond lowers its output over time, but they’ll breed back up. The fish will only be normal quality, but the community center won’t care, and neither will any villager that wants one. Think about that next time Willy asks for an octopus.

Special items. Fish drop more than just stuff you can sell. The best fish, they get you stuff that’s crazy useful. How crazy? Prismatic shards, iridium ore, omnigeodes.

The Cost

A fish pond is a remarkably cheap structure. 5000 gold, 300 stone, 5 green algae, 5 seaweed. What’s the catch?

The catch is that a fish pond only holds one type of fish. When you throw that first fish in, you set the type of pond (you can reset it later) and, depending on the type of fish, it has a maximum population of one or three.

Fish in a fish pond multiply, even if there’s just one fish in it. It takes 1 to 5 days to breed a new fish, again depending on fish type. If the pond tries to breed a new fish but is full, it creates a miniquest: give us this item. The type and number of items are set by the type of fish (often randomly chosen from a list). Until the requested item is provided, the fish pond will not progress further. At ten fish, the pond is at maximum and will not grow further.

For example, a fish pond can only hold one lava eel. Five days after putting that lava eel in it will ask for three fire quartz. Five days after I give it that quartz, the pond will breed a second eel.

The vast majority of fish have a quest at 3, 5, and 7 fish. When the pond reaches 10 fish, it is full and the capacity cannot further increase.

Adding fish to a pond that is breeding does not change the timer. Continuing the above example, after providing the three fire quartz the fish pond will generate a new lava eel five days later. If I add a lava eel to the pond on the second day, then the pond will still generate a new eel three days after that, and will have a total of three eels. If I add two eels to the pond, then on the fifth day it would generate the next quest. There is no way to make the quest happen any faster than that, however.

The lava eel’s second quest will be for 1 basalt, 2 diamonds, or a Dwarf Scroll III (the blue one). It will pick one of these three items. There’s no advance indication of what item will be asked for and reloading does not help.

The Best Fish

What fish give the best items? Simple.
Super Cucumber
With at least nine, you have a 5% chance at iridium ore. Failing that, amethyst or a guaranteed roe. It’s not a super hard catch, either.
You will need
one of (3 Coral, 1 Honey, 1 Oyster, 3 Driftwood, or 3 Refined Quarts); one of (1 Dried Starfish, 2 Emerald, 2-3 Omni Geode, or 2-3 Purple Mushroom); one of (1 Diamond, 3 Gold Bar, 1 Iridium Ore, 1 Jelly, 1 Pickles, or 2 Sea Urchin)

Stonefish
Ice Pip
Lava Eel
With three of these fish you get a 10% chance at five copper, iron, or gold ore respectively. At 9 fish they can also drop geodes, frozen geodes, or magma geodes. Lava eel in particular not only has valuable gold ore and magma geodes, it also gives the priciest roe in the game.
Stonefish you can probably skip, but it follows the same pattern as the other two.
You will need – Stonefish
1. Copper Ore; 5 Earth Crystals; one of (10 Coal or 5 Geodes); one of (4 Copper Bars or 5 Refined Quartz)
You will need – Ice Pip
1. Iron Ore; 5 Frozen Tears; one of (10 Coal, 1 Crystal Fruit, or 5 Frozen Geodes); one of (4 Iron Bars or 10 Refined Quartz)
You will need – Lava Eel
3 Fire Quartz; one of (1 Basalt, 2 Diamonds, 1 Dwarf Scroll III); 2 Mega Bombs; 1 Iridium Bar

Octopus
At 9 fish can drop 3, 10, or 1 omni geodes.
You will need
one of (3 Coral, 1 Honey, 1 Oyster, or 3 Refined Quarts); one of (1 Dried Starfish, 2 Emerald, 2-3 Omni Geode, or 2-3 Purple Mushroom); 1 Green Tea

Rainbow Trout
At 9 fish it gets a 2% chance to drop a rainbow shell. If that fails, 0.1% chance to drop a prismatic shard. That’s not a lot, but when are shards ever easy to get?
You will need
one of (3 Coral, 1 Honey, 1 Oyster, or 3 Refined Quarts); one of (1 Dried Starfish, 2 Emerald, 2-3 Omni Geode, or 2-3 Purple Mushroom); one of (1 Diamond, 3 Gold Bar, 1 Iridium Ore, 1 Jelly, or 1 Pickles)

Sturgeon
It only ever drops roe, and the only thing more fish does is get you more roe. But this roe becomes caviar, which you need for certain things. Worth holding onto, at least for a little bit.
You will need
1 Diamond; one of (1 Jelly, 2 Maple Syrup, or 1 Pickles); 3 Omni Geodes; 1 Nautilus Shell

Second String Fish

These fish all drop something that might be useful, but either not useful enough or not often enough.

Midnight Squid
Squid Ink is only gained from killing squid kids or putting some kind of squid in a pond. Midnight squid is the better of the two, averaging 1.2 ink a day. It’s probably better to hit the mines.

Sunfish
Small chance of a solar essence, otherwise just roe. Cheap roe.

Blobfish
Decent chance at Farm warp totems and a decently pricey roe. Worthless once you get the scepter.

Void Salmon
Decent chance at void essence and even a void egg, but buying the egg is probably better.

Slimejack
Slime. Lots of slime. Lower maintenance than a slime hutch, but the rates aren’t great.

Ghostfish
Quartz! Glorious quartz! A crystalarium’s better.

Crab Pot Fish
The freshwater stuff gets you mountain totems, saltwater gets you beach totems, and both get you a tremendous amount of trash. Mussel and periwinkle breed quick, if you also want “any fish” for fertilizer and sashimi. Almost certainly not worth it, especially once you can build obelisks.

The Math: Drops

A fish pond makes a check each day to see if the pond might produce something. Across all fish, that check has a probability of .15 + (population * 0.08)

With one fish, that’s 15%, or once every week or so. With ten fish, the maximum, that’s 95%, or nearly every day. If this check doesn’t pass, nothing drops, regardless of the next set of checks (which would not happen if the first check fails).

After that first check passes, the game makes a series of checks that are different for each fish. Sometimes it’s easy; a salmon pond has a 90% chance to drop one salmon roe. Sometimes it’s trickier; tuna has a 100% chance of dropping roe if there are at least 5 tuna, or only 70% chance if there is less than five.
Each possible check has a minimum population and the game runs each check for the population the pond has until it either passes a check, and thus the pond drops that item, or until it runs out of checks and thus drops nothing.
That’s right, a pond can pass the first check and still drop nothing. Both the fist overall check and one of the second checks must pass.

Example, a lava eel pond has nine fish in it. It first needs to pass a 87% check or it drops nothing. Let’s say it passes. It now goes down the list.
The first check for 10 magma geodes calls for 10 lava eels. We don’t have that, so it skips that check. But 9 fish unlocks the next one, 5 magma geodes, with a 2% chance. If that passes, the game produces the five geodes and is done. If it fails, it moves onto the next line, 5 Spicy Eel. The 7th line, 100% chance for 1 roe, has a minimum 6 fish, and guarantees a drop. The 8th line, 80% chance for 1 roe, will never run unless the pond has less than six fish.

The Math: Breeding Fish

A fish pond that has at least one fish in it will multiply up to its current maximum population, but slowly. The rate is fixed, with no random elements, but different for each fish.

The carp, herring, sunfish, periwinkle, mussel, and anchovy are the fastest. They generate a new fish every day.
The stonefish, ice pip, and lava eel are the slowest. They generate a new fish every 5 days.

You can use any rod to remove a fish from the pond. Doing so is automatically successful, no minigame, consumes no bait or tackle durability, gives no experience or achievement progress, DOES require energy, and ALWAYS generates a basic, no-quality fish.

With this in mind, the fish pond is far too big for the sale value of fish to justify. The only exception is if the fish in question is a crafting ingredient. The only “fish” used in a crafting recipe is coral, which grows at a rate of 2 days.
Midnight Carp (4 days), Flounder (3 days), and Sea Cucumber (2 days) are the only fish used in cooking recipes that come close to justifying the footprint. Frankly, seafoam pudding is not worth three fish ponds (you’ll also need one for squid).

In general I do not recommend ever fishing from a pond unless it’s to answer a delivery quest.

When a Pond Reaches its Cap
Or if a pond reaches its soft cap. Let’s say your Super Cucumber Pond hits 7 fish, then 4 days later it asks for jelly. You do not actually have any jelly. The pond will remain stuck where it is until it gets jelly. Or, you can fish out the seventh cucumber. On the next day, the cucumber will breed again (they already waited the 4 days since the last breeding) and ask for jelly again. This time if you remove the seventh cucumber it will be a full 4 days before the quest returns. But once you get that jelly, you’ll be able to take those cucumbers you fished out and drop them right back in that pond. In this way with a little bit of help, the pond continues to grow its potential population even if you can’t provide the item it needs. This trick is especially useful if it’s asking for something rare like a specific mineral or iridium.

This is all about Stardew Valley – Fish Ponds: Why and What?; I hope you enjoy reading the Guide! If you feel like we should add more information or we forget/mistake, please let us know via commenting below, and thanks! See you soon!