You don't need to open ports if using Tor, since Tor basically tunnels everything. That's one of my favourite aspects about it; no need to set port rules, no need for static IP and of course no risk of open ports in the router's firewall.
This appears as a contradiction. If bisq.network runs Tor by default, why does its documentation specify ports for mainnet, etc. Is it just a FYI that Tor uses these ports and that they do not need to be set manually?
If you mean the following port specification, it's just referring to a local Bitcoin Core install (on the same machine).
If you're running a Bitcoin full node on the same machine as Bisq, Bisq should connect to your node on startup—it will look for Bitcoin Core or bitcoind running on localhost on port 8333.
It's not a contradiction; you don't need to open a port when using Tor. Tor tunnels the traffic and you're reachable simply by your Tor v3 address. These are even briefly mentioned a few lines later:
Bisq v1.7.4 and later releases support connecting to Bitcoin nodes with Tor v3 addresses.
YOUR CLARIFICATIONS are appreciated. While we are on the topic of Tor ports being routed automatically versus the clearnet instance of BTC Core, I need to ask you about a problem! Now that I am running bisq.network in DAO Full Node I am seeing > 10 outbound peers. BUT I receive an error messge that says that my environment is blocking Tor inbound. How do I enable Tor inbound? The error message mentioned VM as a possiblility but I'm not running a VM. I have checked bisq documentation and I cannot find details on this item.
Compare this with BTC Core and 8113. If I don't set that port trigger in my router I will not have a Full Node as my "in" will be zero. And since bisq.network uses the BTC blockchain for verification, I think that setting that port is mandatory.
If you run Bitcoin Core over clearnet and don't open your port, you won't get incoming connections, right. Besides this not being a big issue, that's exactly what I'm trying to say: clearnet nodes need opened firewall ports, while Tor nodes do not.
You actually don't need to open this port at all; Bitcoin Core works without it, by connecting 'outbound'. This just means someone can't
initiate a connection towards you, but your node can connect to others and the two nodes will exchange Bitcoin messages just the same. You will still get the full blockchain, transactions and can verify everything. Bisq should work just fine with Bitcoin Core only having outbound connections.
As a side question, do I have to do any configuration for Tor or is the process completely automated? And thanks for your help.
I'm pretty sure you do need some configuration; there's no automated Tor setup. I would link to my own full node setup guide, but for simplicity, I had written it in a way that puts Bitcoin Core on clearnet (with closed ports) and everything else (electrs, Core Lightning) on Tor.