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[UristVanHelsing]

I recently filled my 15x15x3 cistern with water, and I have a hospital with a few wells above one half and a bunch of floor grates on the other half. The problem is I can't designate the floor grates as a fishing zone. When I try, it just says "Fishing (0)" in the zones menu. I'm fairly certain this is possible (I believe I've done it before). Is there anything I'm doing wrong?

[Bumber]

Try designating the solid floor next to the grates.

[Fleeting Frames]

Also, not every embark has aquifer turtles. It's possible that your cistern simply doesn't contain any fish.

[UristVanHelsing]

I tried doing the solid tiles next to it, no dice.

There's no aquifer on my embark, the cistern is filled from a diverted river.

[PatrikLundell]

As far as I understand fishing can only be done in 16 * 16 in-game tile areas that DF somehow* has marked as containing vermin "fish"*. Within such tile it's possible to catch "fish" in dug ponds, but those tiles always contain a native body of water as well. Outside of those tiles I don't think "fish" can be found (the lung fish flying all over the place may be an exception, although I don't know if you can catch them).

I've never seen aquifer turtles, and the wiki claims they don't exist. You'll get a zero if DF thinks you know there's no fish in the area (but still it sends the stupid fisherdorfs to the same barren murky pools again and again, to report that there's nothing to be caught).

*"fish": Mussels, pond turtles, etc. aren't fish biologically, of course, but they fall under the heading of vermin fish all the same.
*somehow: As far as I know the DF structure mapping hasn't identified the marking.

[Fleeting Frames]

Much like OP, I've certainly caught some pond turtles underground in my well before, though I don't recall the specifics of filling it at that time - probably should test out next time I see some and have an aquifer on embark.

Similarly, in moonhome I dug two channels into aquifer on z125 in ocean biome, and caught fish there, though I'd expect that to be a different thing.

As far as flags go, Sethathos mentioned he got fish deep underground after repopulating fish with dfhack because they ran out

[anewaname]

- The water needs to be 1-z level below the zone, so you cannot use a deeper well to fish from.
- The water needs to be deep enough (1/7 water is too low, 2/7 might be enough, 5/7 is enough).
- The adjacent tile needs to be a tile a dwarf can stand in.

It does not matter if there are fish or no fish to be caught, the zone will show Fishing(1) for each tile that meets the above requirements. It doesn't matter if there is a floor grate or a well, only the above requirements.

[UristVanHelsing]

I can post screen shots later when I get home, but it's a three level cistern that is completely full, 7/7 water on all tiles. The floor grates are 1z above the top level of the cistern. Is that the problem? Also there are walkable tiles next to the grates.

Thanks for all the responses!

[Gag Halfrunt]

I've never seen aquifer turtles, and the wiki claims they don't exist.

Really?  If by "seen" you mean the display showing a turtle in the aquifer pond tile, I'd have to agree (but ISTR reading somewhere [yeah, I hate that I can't report where] that such displayed fish are unrelated to what a fisherdwarf might catch).  Catching pond turtles from a hole channeled into an aquifer is SOP for my forts, though.

I routinely set zone-only fishing and punch an underground aquifer hole below for a secure source of water and turtles (habit formed in my early days, when werebeast infections were more *fun* than I wanted).  I've watched dorfs fish at the aquifer pool and then haul a turtle away to the fishery or raw fish stockpile, with or without a covering grate or well.

Sometimes the aquifer pool seems to produce forever, sometimes they seem to play out after a while, sometimes they come back.  Sometimes, zone designation reports zero fishable tiles from day one, even placed below a surface stream or pool; on at least one such occasion I couldn't catch anything from the surface stream, either, and had no shells until a giant snail wandered into a trap.  (knowing no compelling reason to update, I play 43.05)

The wiki I read clearly states "Pond turtles can also be found by digging into an aquifer"
(https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Pond_turtle)

I suspect the OP lack of "fish" is either unfortunate placement with respect to the invisible 16x16 "fishable grid" or just bad luck.  Sometimes I can't find a fishable tile anywhere, even in pre-existing surface waters.

[PatrikLundell]

I've never seen turtle "graphics" near/in my aquifers. If it's possible to catch pond (i.e. not aquifer) turtles there I've missed it due to not trying to do any fishing (I gave that up after some early failures to catch actual aquifer turtles, which didn't result in the catch of anything). Thus, it's new to me that you may actually be lucky and able to catch pond turtles in aquifers. If the game breaking raid bug is fixed and Villains doesn't make DF unplayable (I'm getting increasingly worried about that), I'll try that in my next fortress.

[FantasticDorf]

Pond turtles will spawn in aquifers if there is already no other water for them to spawn in and its still dirt layer, i've had vermin like toads appear generally in pools 2 deep above the cavern layer if the climate is correct but not dirty ponds. The ponds that were there had already froze and probably freed up the spawns as a additional factor.

May be determined heavily by relative elevation, if you push water up high on a high elevation build then you'll likely get unrestricted spawns that are suitable for that (that dont lay eggs like pond turtles do, which is a complication as they used to be finite before) which aren't sourced from touching a dirty pond or river tile. (aquifers are neither)