Stardew Valley player turns cabin into aquarium, showing off every fish

A total of 3 cabins can be rented Stardew Valley, and they’re designed for co-op play. They can be used by players to store equipment or other items. Cabins offer more space than sheds, but take up less land on a farm. What if you filled the cabin with something creative and more decorative instead?

Redditor Papikipp created an aquarium in one of his homes, and did exactly that. Stardew Valley cabins — bringing a little slice of Animal Crossing New Horizons’ museum into the other popular cozy farming game.

“I actually used a cabin for this design, my main home is designed as an actual home,” Papikipp told Polygon via Reddit chat. “I was actually inspired by animal crossing’s museum aquariums. An aquarium is a great way to show off all the fish that we have caught in the game. The fishes swimming around makes it so much more fun. It also helped me a lot with getting the master angler achievement.”

Papikipp’s aquarium is an impressive feat, both in its creative design and because of the fishing skill it required. He has every item in his cabin. Stardew Valley’s 83 fish — it features Two of each so “they wouldn’t be lonely,” he explained on Reddit. It took Papikipp roughly a week to create the aquarium — from designing it to catching the various fish — and he did so without mods, on Nintendo Switch.

“Completing it fully along with the fishies took about a week give or take since I had to wait for different seasons for different fishies,” Papikipp said. “Legendary fishes are always a pain, especially with the fishing mini game. The octopus was also a challenge, I would even say that it’s harder to catch than the legendaries. The specialty fishes in the mines and the desert (stonefish, lava fish, ice pip, etc) were also a bit of a challenge since their movement patterns are very unpredictable.”

This layout has many details. You can see the fish types organized according to region. The cabin has mountain fish on the left and the deep sea fish in the tanks on the right. Surrounding decorative items stick with this theme, from the wallpaper details — with snowy wallpaper on the upper left, and starry night (representing the deep sea) in the room on the bottom right — to the trees featured throughout. You will also find display sections to show different shells. Porthole windows provide natural light.

Papikipp explained: “I designed the rooms to match the habitat of the fishes, it starts off as a mountain area at the top left corner then you make your way through the forest/riverland then through the desert then the ocean all the way to the bottom of the sea, adding more cohesiveness!”

In order to fit everything, Papikipp used a variety of tank sizes, including the largest tank size, which can can be acquired from Qi’s Walnut Room — introduced as part of the game’s substantial update in December 2020, which added the new location Ginger Island, along with other new late-game content.

Image: ConcernedApe/Chucklefish Games via papikipp

“Positioning the aquariums took a bit of time since you can’t rotate them vertically,” Papikipp said. “I was also afraid I wasn’t going to be able to fit all the fish but in the end I had extra space for duplicates. I also knew I wanted to display ocean/fishing related items for my aquarium which helped fill all the other spaces.”

Papikipp converted the cabin’s kitchen space into a seafood restaurant, with cellar space turned into an extended dining area. This raised one particular question that Papikipp was quick to address: “The fishes in the aquariums are not for eating purposes,” he said, “the fish used in the restaurant are farmed in the fish ponds just outside of the aquarium!”