What is the best fish for the pond?
Solution 1:
Fish Ponds can be used for two purposes: multiplying fish or other water dwellers, and harvesting roe or other products.
These fish that seem to be particularly useful:
Carp
With a value of only 30g, carps are perfect to turn into sashimi for a quick refill of energy.
Sturgeon
Sturgeon roe becomes caviar when processed in a preserves jar, which sells for 500g each and benefits from the Artisan profession. Not bad for a constant, passive source of income.
Lava Eel
As the most expensive fish that can be placed in fish ponds, lava eels are an obvious choice for anyone just looking for additional money.
Eel
Regular eels can be cooked with hot peppers to make the spicy eel dish, which increases both luck and movement speed. Having an easy way to cook many of these is certainly useful, given how luck and movement speed affect almost every aspect of a farmer's life.
Lobster
When cooked with milk, lobsters can be turned into lobster bisque, which provides a huge +3 boost to the Fishing skill. Very useful when going after some of the trickier fish to catch.
Solution 2:
As of patch 1.5, three new fishe types were introduced on Ginger Island, each one with island-related items that are very useful to obtain from a fish pond.
- Lionfish can give you Tiger Slime Eggs (2% per day with 9 population) to hatch. The tiger slime can then be bred with other slimes for a greater chance of pure white slimes which drop diamonds when killed.
- Blue Discus can give Golden Coconuts (5% per day with 9 population) to break for island goodies. They also give bananas (5 ~15% with 4 population) and can get you the Gorilla G-walnuts faster than waiting for a banana sapling to grow.
- Stingrays can give Magma Caps (2% 4-pop) great sell value and healing, Cinder Shards (8% 7-pop) for the forge, allowing you to skip on farming the volcano dungeon, Dragon Tooth (5% 9-pop) you can trade for banana saplings or make island totems with, and batteries (10% 9-pop).
I strongly recommend several stingray ponds (for forging) and one blue discus for the bananas early on.