Idle Fish Farm Tips: Ponds, Fleet, Floods and Species

A fish farm is a lovely idea for an idle game: drop in a handful of fry, wait, and watch the ponds fill with silver fish. The trick is that fish alone do not pay. They have to reach the market. These idle fish farm tips are built around Machh Chash, our free fish farming game, where a young farmer rebuilds his family's ponds after a flood. Many of the ideas also help in other farming and management games.

In Machh Chash you play Sohel. Last year's flood took every fish he had. Nasrin Apa, the fisheries officer, helps him start again, Kalam drives the truck to market, and Mojid Mahajan, the wholesaler, pays well for good fish, and best of all in winter.

How the farm makes money

Three numbers decide your income:

1. Fish. Every fish in the ponds grows a little each second. The strip under the farm shows how many fish you have and how many the ponds have room for.
2. The fleet. Rickshaw vans, pickups and lorries carry the grown fish to market. The truck badge in the strip shows how much of the harvest they carry.
3. The price. Each species has its own price, the season changes it, and the ice plant and research add to it.

Your sales are the smaller of the harvest and what the fleet carries, times the price. That one rule explains most of the game.

Keep the ponds and the fleet together

At the start you have the small pond and one van. Tap the pond to release fingerlings, and the first coins arrive as soon as the van starts its trips.

Soon one of two things happens:

• The ponds fill up. The fish counter reaches its limit and taps release nothing more. Widen the pond in the Farm tab.
• The fleet falls behind. The truck badge drops below 100% and turns orange. Fish are growing that nobody sells. Buy another van in the Fleet tab.

The best farms keep both close together. A good habit is to check the strip after every few purchases: if the badge is below 100%, the next coins go to the fleet; if the counter is full, they go to the ponds. The big pond opens at small pond level 10, and the pickup at 10 vans, so these limits also unlock your next big step.

Study the right research first

The Research tab holds 20 ideas, and more of them open as you finish more steps. A simple order works well:

• Hand Nets first. Every step adds two more fry per tap, which fills the first pond much faster.
• Better Feed and Aerators next. More growth per fish means more kilos from the same pond.
• Racks for your vehicles. Each vehicle type has its own research that makes it carry more.
• Hatchery Pumps once you build the hatchery, so it releases fry on its own while you do other things.

Later, Cold Chain improves every vehicle at once and Export Deals raises the price of every kilo.

Beat the monsoon floods

Every monsoon brings a flood. A minute before it arrives, a line at the top of the farm shows its strength, from 1 to 4. If your embankment is at least that high, the water stops at the edge of the gher and every fish stays safe. If it is lower, part of your fish swims out with the flood water.

So the rule is simple: raise the embankment before the floods grow stronger. The first level is cheap and handles the early floods. Later ones cost more, but floods of strength 3 and 4 do come, and losing a large share of a full farm costs far more than the embankment. The Floodgates research softens any flood that still gets through.

Treat fish disease quickly

Now and then the fish fall sick. The water turns murky, the fish swim slowly and growth is halved. A Treat button appears in the strip, with a timer: treat the ponds within the time, or part of the fish is lost.

• Treat early. It costs about half a minute of sales, which is nothing compared with losing a fifth of your fish.
• Build the medicine shed. It treats an outbreak on its own after a short wait, and each level makes the wait shorter.
• Study Vet Visits and Fish Doctors. They soften the growth loss while the fish are sick.

Use the seasons

The year turns every few minutes of play. Winter brings the best prices, spring is good, summer is normal and the monsoon is the cheapest, with the floods on top. You cannot skip a season, but you can use it: save big purchases for the monsoon, and enjoy the extra coins in winter.

Move on to the next species

Each species has a target: keep that many fish at once, and the Species tab lets you move on. You start with rui, then katla, tilapia, pangas, pabda and finally giant river prawns, and each one sells for about four times as much as the last.

Moving on starts the farm again, ponds, fleet and research included, but you keep your Know-how, which makes the fish grow faster and every handful of fry bigger, for good. Move on as soon as you reach the target: the new species catches up with your old income very quickly. The farm itself grows too, from a village pond to a riverside farm and a big gher in the delta.

If you enjoy games like this, also try App Studio with our idle dev tycoon tips, Brick Field with our idle factory tycoon tips, or Launch Ghat with our idle boat tycoon tips. You can find more in the idle games and simulation games categories, and signed-in players can read how GamesYap points work.

FAQ

Is Machh Chash free to play?

Yes. Machh Chash is free in your web browser on phones, tablets and computers, with nothing to download or buy. Optional ads can treat sick fish for free or double the fish price for a while, but they never give points.

Do floods and disease come at random?

No. Both follow a fixed schedule as you play, a flood's strength is shown a minute before it arrives, and an outbreak always gives you time to treat it.

Why are my coins not growing?

Look at the strip. If the fish counter is full, widen the ponds. If the truck badge is below 100%, buy more vehicles.

Which species is the best?

Each species is worth more than the one before it, so the newest one is always the best to farm. The giant river prawns at the end are worth the most of all.