Stardew Valley · Fish Ponds · Preserves Jar production

Want Caviar? Put Sturgeon Roe in the jar, not the fish

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1. See the game scene
2. Establish the pond before expanding the processing line
3. The two jar routes
4. Use the fish’s base price for the roe calculation
5. If production appears stuck
6. Sources and scope

Sturgeon Roe becomes Caviar in a Preserves Jar; other roe becomes its corresponding Aged Roe. A valuable fish does not guarantee a daily product, so plan pond growth and jar capacity separately from the sale price.

See the game scene

mGaud — Fish Pond building and maintenance from 0:13, October 18, 2025. Original creator footage for scene and interface context. The written mechanics below use the separately checked references. Open the original video if the player does not load.

Establish the pond before expanding the processing line

1. Build a Fish Pond through Robin: 5,000g, 200 Stone, five Seaweed and five Green Algae. Leave room for its 5×5 footprint.
2. Choose the species for the product you need and put the fish into the pond.
3. Inspect its population cap and complete its requests when they appear. A completed request raises capacity; it does not instantly fill the pond.
4. Collect the actual produced roe, then load a Preserves Jar with that item.
5. Collect the finished product and compare the resulting output with your goal before adding more ponds.

The pond rolls production based on species and population. A high sale price is not equivalent to that price earned every day. The creator’s overview shows the pond system; the decision here is about processing rather than copying a universal ranking.

The two jar routes

Sturgeon: its roe makes Caviar worth 500g, or 700g with Artisan, after 6,000 processing minutes. Caviar is one option for the Missing Bundle, so keep a needed jar rather than selling the entire batch.

Other roe: Aged Roe sells for twice the raw roe’s value, with Artisan adding its processing bonus. It takes 4,000 processing minutes. Actual completion dates depend on when you load the machine and overnight time handling; these are processing values, not a promise of a fixed number of daytime hours.

Use the fish’s base price for the roe calculation

Raw Roe uses floor(30 + base fish price ÷ 2). Do not feed a gold-quality fish’s increased sale value or an Angler-adjusted sale into that formula. Raw Roe itself receives no profession price bonus.

For an illustrative non-Sturgeon species with base price 200g, roe is 130g. Aged Roe is 260g, or 364g with Artisan. Processing adds 130g or 234g respectively over selling that roe raw, before accounting for the jar and the pond. The pond’s random output frequency is not included in this per-item example.

If production appears stuck

Inspect population, pending requests and the product already waiting for collection. Some pond species produce items other than roe; both Squid species normally produce Squid Ink. Identify the species before treating the absence of roe as a broken jar setup.

When changing species, recover fish you wish to keep and read the pond reset action carefully. Resetting clears its progression and removes any Golden Animal Cracker benefit; catching fish out is a different action. Do not destroy a developed setup merely because one day had no product.

Sources and scope

Published October 18, 2026. Sources checked on this date: Fish Pond · Roe · Aged Roe · Caviar · Preserves Jar. Written for the documented 1.6 mechanics where version differences matter. Worked examples assume ordinary single-player prices and are calculated, not our gameplay earnings tests. Creator footage remains on the original upload.

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