The Bait Tank is where your live bait comes from. Stock it with two bait fish of one kind, keep them fed and their water right, and the shoal grows, one fish every six hours, up to thirty. It is the first of our Breedables.
Why live bait
Most baits stop short of the epics. Live bait reaches them. A live fish is taken by the fish that hunt that kind, so every bait fish is its own key: live sprat brings swordfish, tuna and common skate; live herring brings Atlantic halibut, porbeagle and shortfin mako. The full list is further down.
Rares and epics bite on public realms, each realm dealt its own every Monday. The fishing page’s Biting now shows where they are this week and what they take: Fishing HUD & Game for Second Life — SL Colonies Roleplay
Every live fish is also an item. Put it on the hook, stock another tank with it, or trade it to another angler. Live fish cannot be cooked.
Setting it up: choose its water
Rez the tank and left-click it. A new tank asks for its water, fresh or salt, and from then on it takes only fish of that water. Choose by what you want to breed:
| Water | Bait fish it keeps |
|---|---|
| Fresh | bleak, bluegill, creek chub, dace, gudgeon, pumpkinseed, rock bass |
| Salt | anchovy, herring, prawn, sardine, sprat |
Arctic cod and capelin are tank fish too, and join the salt list when cold salt water opens.
One kind lives in a tank at a time. An empty tank takes any fish of its water; once it has fish, it takes only more of the same kind.
Stocking it
A tank needs two of a kind before anything breeds. There are three ways to get them in.
From the water. Fish with the fishing HUD and a rod (a light rod is good for bait fish). Land a small fish, common or uncommon and no heavier than 0.6 kg, and the HUD offers three things:
- Live bait now: straight back on the hook.
- Keep in bucket: alive for an hour from landing. The bucket holds five.
- Keep it: into your inventory as an ordinary fish, which cannot go in a tank.
Choose the bucket, come back to your tank, left-click it and choose Stock, then From bucket. It takes your newest bucket fish that suits the tank, one a press. A Mastery reward still to come, the Fisherman’s Boon, will keep bucket fish alive for two hours.
From your inventory. Live fish taken out of a tank (yours, or one bought or traded from another keeper) sit in your inventory as live sprat, live dace and so on. Stock lists the ones that suit the tank; choose one and how many.
From another tank. Take fish out of one tank and stock them into another of the same water.
A tank holds 30. It refuses fish beyond that, and a second kind.
Feeding it
Left-click and choose Feed, then how many.
- Fresh water eats bait worms or maggots.
- Salt water eats fish feed.
One feed keeps one fish fed for one day. Ten fish and ten feed is a day; ten fish and thirty feed is three days. Feeding again adds on from when the food would have run out.
Fed fish breed. Hungry fish stop growing, but they do not die, so a missed day costs you time, never stock.
Keeping the water right
Every bait fish has a pH band:
| Fish | pH band | A new tank starts at |
|---|---|---|
| Salt-water fish | 8.0 to 8.4 | 8.2 |
| Fresh-water fish | 6.5 to 7.5 | 7.0 |
| Dace and bleak | 7.0 to 7.8 | 7.0 |
Left-click and choose Treat water:
- Eggshells raise the pH by 0.2 each.
- Peat moss lowers it by 0.2 each.
The fish’s own waste pulls the pH down, every six hours, and faster the bigger the shoal: 0.05 for every ten fish or part of ten. So eggshells are the everyday fix, and peat moss is for when you overshoot.
Out of its band the tank turns sick: it loses one fish every six hours until the water is put right. In the video Samuel drops a salt tank to 7.8 with two peat moss and the fish go sick at once; eggshells bring them back.
Three tips:
- Keep it near the top of the band. A salt tank of ten fish topped up to 8.4 lasts 54 hours before it drifts out; left at 8.2, 30.
- Dace and bleak start at the very bottom of their band. A fresh tank begins at 7.0, so give them an eggshell or two as soon as they go in, or the first six hours take them out of it.
- Salt bands are narrow. Topped up to 8.4, a salt tank of up to twenty fish lasts a day. Over twenty it drifts out in eighteen hours, so look in twice a day or keep it under twenty. Fresh bands are wider and forgive more.
A day of keeping it
| Fish in the tank | Feed a day | pH falls a day | Eggshells to hold it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 to 10 | 2 to 10 | 0.2 | 1 |
| 11 to 20 | 11 to 20 | 0.4 | 2 |
| 21 to 30 | 21 to 30 | 0.6 | 3 |
How it grows
The tank works in six-hour steps. Each step:
- the pH drifts down;
- if it is now out of band, a fish dies;
- otherwise, if the fish are fed and there are at least two, one more is born, up to 30.
So a pair that is fed and kept in band becomes a full tank of 30 in seven days. The tank does not need you there: it catches up on every step it missed the next time anyone touches it.
Taking live bait
Left-click and choose Take fish, then how many. They go into your inventory as live fish. The tank always keeps two, so it can breed again.
Empty tank gives you every fish, the last two as well, all alive. Use it to change what the tank keeps: an empty tank shows Change water, which starts it afresh in the other water, unfed.
Which live bait for which fish
Each live bait is taken by the fish that hunt it. These are the fish in the water today; legendaries take only chain bait.
Fresh water
| Live bait | Uncommon | Rare | Epic |
|---|---|---|---|
| bleak | walleye, white bass | muskellunge | |
| bluegill | largemouth bass | flathead catfish, northern pike | wels catfish |
| creek chub | blue catfish, flathead catfish, lake trout | wels catfish | |
| dace | walleye | burbot | |
| gudgeon | zander | burbot | |
| pumpkinseed | largemouth bass, white bass, zander | blue catfish, lake trout | |
| rock bass | northern pike | muskellunge |
Salt water
| Live bait | Uncommon | Rare | Epic |
|---|---|---|---|
| anchovy | Atlantic bonito, bass, bluefish, pollack | albacore, blue shark, tope, turbot | swordfish |
| herring | Atlantic bonito, bluefish, common cuttlefish, pollack | anglerfish | Atlantic halibut, porbeagle, shortfin mako |
| prawn | summer flounder | albacore, blue shark, John Dory, snapper, striped bass | shortfin mako |
| sardine | summer flounder | brill, snapper | Atlantic halibut, common skate, porbeagle, tuna |
| sprat | bass, common cuttlefish | anglerfish, brill, John Dory, striped bass, tope, turbot | common skate, swordfish, tuna |
Commons still bite on live bait as well, alongside its hunters.
Where the supplies come from
| Supply | In the tank | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| fish feed | feeds a salt-water tank | Cooking Station: 3 wheat + 1 anchovy make 10, a level 1 Cook recipe |
| bait worms | feed a fresh-water tank | turned up by the Compost Bin’s fertilizer, rich compost and mulches; the Fisherman Master sells 20 for 5 CXP |
| maggots | feed a fresh-water tank | turned up by the Compost Bin’s fertilizer, rich compost and mulches |
| eggshells | raise the pH by 0.2 | collecting eggs from your chickens with a small basket turns up one or two on about half the collections |
| peat moss | lowers the pH by 0.2 | Compost Bin: 10 dung + 10 reed make 10, a level 0 recipe anyone can make |
So a tank keeps a Cook, a composter and a chicken keeper busy as well as you, and all of them have something to sell you.
The station guides: Cooking Station [CRAFTABLES] Cooking Station · Compost Bin [CRAFTABLES] Compost Bin · Chicken Coop [FARMABLES] Chicken Coop
Reading the tank
The hover text shows the fish and how many, the pH against the band they want, how long they are fed for, and the tank’s state:
- growing: fed and in band, breeding.
- hungry: in band but unfed. Not growing, not dying.
- sick: out of band, shown in red. Losing a fish every six hours.
- full: 30 fish. Take some out and it breeds again.
- empty: ready to stock.
Up to twelve of the fish swim in the glass, whatever the count. Hungry fish swim slowly; sick ones slower still, listing and drifting up.
Sharing it
Who else may use the tank follows its security, as on any SL Colonies station. Anyone it lets in can stock, feed, treat and take fish, spending from and receiving into their own inventory. Only the owner sets up a new tank’s water.
Making it yours
The tank is modifiable. Keep the root prim, where the scripts are; the rest, the glass tank and its swimming fish, can be unlinked and deleted to save land impact, or the root dressed in a build of your own. Your fish live on the server, not in the prims.
The tank is 1.2 m square and 0.8 m tall.
The product page is here: https://slcoloniesroleplay.com/treasure/bait-tank
New to fishing? Start with Fishing 101: Fishing 101: casting, the fight, bait, rods and lines