It is possible to collect tropical fish in buckets as with any other species of fish. However, they will all use the texture of a clownfish bucket, regardless of the actual fish. This appears to only be an issue with the textures, since the bucket will still place down the expected fish.
Relates to MC-208683
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Comments 7
They could easily do something with 3 texture files:
1 bucket
2 fish part 1
3 fish part 2
and have the fish colored like the fish variant it stores.
Likely intentional so that an unnecessary number of new items don't need to be added, and since all tropical fish in the game are classified under clownfish.