Anyone into fish breeding that can explain to me how to make a tank for the feeder? Mine is 9x9x5 and it STILL says tank too small. Is there a trick to it? I thought the feeder just detected how many water blocks it was surrounded by.
Okay, this worked for me, but not sure it's necessary. I watched a youtube series on Mariculture (forget whose offhand since I watch a bunch) and he was very specific about the requirements. All I know is those worked, not that other configurations won't. He did the smallest in a 3x3 interior, 2 deep, with the sides 3 long and no corners. He said anything in the corners, including water would screw it up. All I know is that configuration worked, though sometimes did have to take the breeding pair out and put them back in. Fish food seems to go in best after the fish are good. For the short-lived stuff, 5 fish meal is plenty. (You should soon be trying to find room for dead fish, so waste is not a problem.)
The medium is also 3 long sides, but with a diagonal, again leaving the outside corners open. It also is 2 deep.
The large (or advanced) is 5 long sides with 2 diagonal single blocks between them, with those outside corners open. It is 3 deep.
Wasteland biome is really hot. You will need cooling for even the tolerant fish in most cases. Wasteland will probably be indicated for those nether and ender fish.
Let me see about putting some screenshots up for this. At least you can know these configurations do work, even if there are a few more potential difficulties (temp, time of day, compatible fish, etc.)
I am no expert, be warned. Just managing to get some things working.
I found out the fishing nets work great with hopperhocks (love those things!) I'll put up a screenie of my little netting area too. Seem to only get cod in that. It's in an ocean biome. Haven't really tried elsewhere. They are slow but steady producers of dead cod, which give plenty for your fish food needs. You'll end up with loads more from other fishing and farming too.
The automatic fisher also works well. Power is the big issue there, and chest space. It does pretty well catching live fish, and those are fairly unique so take a lot of chest slots. The fisher doesn't seem to recognise double chests and just fills the one side. Just have to pair the bait to the rod in use. I use a lot of reed rods because bread is an easy bait. So far seem to catch a wide variety with bread and no real noticeable difference with maggots or grasshoppers. Haven't tried minnows yet because been hoarding them until I have a full stack. Was about to start breeding them, then there was a small incident with a creeper (didn't think they could spawn on those plank blocks!) that snuck up on me while I was checking the fisher and blew up the chest with all the live fish (it would be THAT one.)
I put up the hatchery, but was already to where I could get an incubator going, so didn't really do much with it. I dropped in some eggs and it produced some splashes, so it was doing something, but not sure how that works. No gui, so it may dump live fish on the deck, where they will die. Or may output to an adjacent inventory. Or my hopperhock might grab them before they die. Text suggest it's slow so after about 15 minutes I just broke it and built the incubator.
Incubator takes a long time because it processes one egg at a time, and requires a power pulse for each, so unless you have speed upgrades and a power oversupply, it will takes days for fish like cod that lay big egg clutches. To see how it works, drop in sting ray eggs. They are infertile and produce batches of single eggs. That means it takes a minute or so and done, and you get one male and one female (since it forces a result of at least one of each sex.) With the larger batches it occasionally hatches out a live fish as it works its way through hundreds or thousands of eggs.
Based on what I have seen so far, the only real reason for more than one tank is to put them in different biomes to make adjusting salinity and temperature easier (beach = brackish/warmish, ocean = saline/cooler, wasteland = fresh/hellishly hot). One advanced tank in each should give you more eggs than you care to dump into the incubator(s). Koi or something really long-lived might adjust my opinion on that. Eggs are only produced when the fish finishes its lifespan and koi live a long time.
Oh, feeder I put in the center on the bottom. Have to dive into the big tank, so make some steps up the side (not corners unless you test and see that it doesn't fubar the tank.)
Let me make some screenies and attach below.
I put everything in an album with some explanation:
http://imgur.com/a/UnVETh8 massive builds w/o it
