Fish Identifier

Fish Encyclopedia

Search and identify 1,000+ fish species — freshwater, saltwater, reef, and pelagic — with habitat, size, diet, behavior, and how to tell them apart.

all freshwater saltwater reef pelagic cartilaginous deepsea brackish

Mbu Pufferfish

The Mbu Pufferfish is the largest freshwater pufferfish species, native to Central Africa's Congo River system and known for its maze-like yellow body markings.

Marbled Hatchetfish

Marbled Hatchetfish

A tiny South American fish with a deep, keeled belly and enlarged pectoral fins that let it skim and glide just above the water surface to escape predators.

Neon Rainbowfish

Neon Rainbowfish

A small, brilliantly colored rainbowfish from New Guinea whose males flash iridescent blue-violet when displaying to rivals or mates.

Otocinclus

A tiny suckermouth catfish that spends most of its time grazing algae and biofilm from surfaces in slow-moving South American waters.

Leopard Danio

A spotted color morph of the Zebrafish, the Leopard Danio trades horizontal stripes for a striking pattern of dark spots across a golden body.

Neon Tetra

A tiny schooling characin from Amazonian blackwater streams, instantly recognized by its glowing blue-green stripe and bright red lower body, one of the most popular aquarium fish ever kept.

Lake Trout

A large, deep-lake char native to cold northern North American waters, marked by pale spots on a dark greenish-gray body and a deeply forked tail. It typically inhabits the coldest, deepest zones of large lakes.

Ohio Lamprey

The Ohio lamprey is a parasitic, jawless fish native to medium and large rivers of the eastern United States, attaching to host fish with a toothed sucking disc to feed.

Ornate Bichir

A striking Central African freshwater fish with an eel-like body covered in an intricate leopard-spot network pattern and a row of spiny finlets along its back.

Kryptopterus

A small, almost entirely transparent Southeast Asian catfish whose internal skeleton and organs are visible through its glass-like body, popular in the aquarium trade.

Green Terror

A robust, iridescent-green South American cichlid whose bold turquoise spangling and feisty temperament earned it its combative common name.

Kissing Gourami

Kissing Gourami

A large, elongated Southeast Asian gourami famous for its thick, protrusible lips, which it uses to graze algae and to engage in "kissing" contests, an actual test of strength between rivals.

Least Brook Lamprey

Least Brook Lamprey

The least brook lamprey is one of the smallest lamprey species in North America, a non-parasitic freshwater fish found in small streams of the central and southeastern United States.

Mahseer

A powerful, large-scaled carp of fast Himalayan rivers, the golden mahseer is prized as one of the hardest-fighting freshwater fish, with a thick, muscular body built for holding in strong current.

Horseface Loach

Horseface Loach

The Horseface Loach is a slender, burrowing loach recognized by its elongated, downturned snout, native to sandy-bottomed rivers of Southeast Asia.

Huchen

The huchen, or Danube salmon, is Europe's largest freshwater salmonid, a powerful river predator native to the Danube basin that has become increasingly rare due to damming and habitat fragmentation.

Lake Sturgeon

The lake sturgeon is a large, armored, long-lived freshwater fish native to the Great Lakes and Mississippi basin, recognizable by its bony scute rows and shovel-shaped snout.

Gudgeon

A small, bottom-dwelling cyprinid with a pair of sensory barbels at the mouth corners, the gudgeon forages over gravel and sand in loose shoals, well camouflaged among stones.

Grayling

A slender freshwater salmonid relative famed for its tall, sail-like dorsal fin, native to cold, clear rivers of Europe.

Harlequin Rasbora

Harlequin Rasbora

A small, deep-bodied freshwater fish with a coppery-orange body and a distinctive black triangular patch covering the rear half, native to the blackwater streams of Southeast Asia.

Giant Gourami

The largest gourami species, a deep-bodied Southeast Asian labyrinth fish that can exceed two feet in length and shifts from an insect-eating juvenile diet to a largely plant-based adult diet.

Ide

A robust, silvery cyprinid of large European rivers and lakes, the ide (commonly bred as the golden 'orfe') forms active surface shoals and is a widely stocked ornamental pond fish worldwide.

Green Tiger Barb

Green Tiger Barb

A green-toned color variant of the popular Tiger Barb, retaining the same bold dark bands and active, schooling nature as the classic orange form.

Knife Livebearer

Knife Livebearer

A slender Central American livebearer named for the sharp, blade-like keel along its belly, an adaptation believed to aid rapid escape jumps.

Golden Shiner

A slender, deep-bodied North American minnow with brassy golden-silver sides, the golden shiner is among the continent's most widely used baitfish, thriving in weedy ponds and slow-moving water.

Lacustrine Rainbowfish

Lacustrine Rainbowfish

A brilliant turquoise-blue rainbowfish endemic to Lake Kutubu in Papua New Guinea, now considered endangered due to pollution linked to nearby natural gas extraction.

Kokanee Salmon

Kokanee are a landlocked, non-migratory form of sockeye salmon that spend their entire life in freshwater lakes, turning bright red during their autumn spawning run into tributary streams.

Glass Knifefish

Glass Knifefish

A slender, near-transparent South American fish that swims using a continuous rippling fin and emits a weak electric field to sense its surroundings.

Jack Dempsey

A robust Central American cichlid named after a boxing champion for its feisty temperament, known for iridescent blue-green speckling that develops as it matures.

Gold Gourami

A selectively bred, solid golden-yellow color variety of the Three Spot Gourami, developed for the aquarium trade and sharing the same hardy, adaptable biology as its wild-type relative.

Head and Tail Light Tetra

Head and Tail Light Tetra

An Amazon and Guiana river characin named for its glowing metallic eye and tail-base spots, resembling a pair of tiny headlights.

Honey Gourami

A small, peaceful South Asian labyrinth fish whose breeding males flush a warm honey-gold to orange color with a dark throat and belly, making it a popular gentle community fish.

Hillstream Loach

Hillstream Loach

A flattened, disc-bodied loach adapted to cling to rocks in fast mountain streams, using its wide fanned fins as a natural suction system.

Frontosa

A striking striped cichlid from Lake Tanganyika, notable for the bulging cranial hump adult males develop above their eyes.

Flame Tetra

A Rio de Janeiro coastal stream characin with a graduated flame-like color pattern from silver at the head to red-orange at the tail.

Kuhli Loach

An eel-like, nocturnal loach with a banded body that burrows through substrate in streams across Southeast Asia.

Green Sunfish

A hardy, aggressive small sunfish with a large mouth and dark greenish-blue body marked with yellow-green flecking, tolerant of poor water conditions where few other sunfish can survive.

Guppy

A small livebearing fish native to northeastern South America, famous for the males' vividly colored, ornately shaped tails and its worldwide popularity in the aquarium hobby.

Gambusia

A small, hardy North American livebearer famous for its voracious appetite for mosquito larvae, widely introduced worldwide for mosquito control with significant ecological consequences.

Koi

Ornamental color varieties of the Amur carp, selectively bred in Japan for centuries into hundreds of red, white, black, and gold patterns kept in decorative ponds worldwide.

Iridescent Shark

Iridescent Shark

Despite its name, this is a large freshwater catfish, not a shark, recognized in juveniles by an iridescent sheen and dark stripes that fade with age.

Jaguar Cichlid

A large, powerfully built Central American predator whose irregular black leopard-like blotches over a pale body give it its common name.

Grass Carp

A large, torpedo-shaped herbivorous carp native to East Asia, widely introduced worldwide to control aquatic vegetation due to its voracious appetite for water plants.

Kribensis

A small, colorful West African dwarf cichlid best known for the vivid magenta belly females display, especially during courtship.

Gold Dust Molly

Gold Dust Molly

A selectively bred molly variety combining a golden-yellow base color with fine black speckling, developed in the aquarium trade from wild Poecilia stock.

Golden Trout

One of the most brilliantly colored freshwater fish in North America, native to a small area of high-elevation streams in California's Sierra Nevada, marked with vivid golden-orange flanks and crimson stripes.

Florida Gar

A heavily spotted gar endemic to the Florida peninsula, recognized by dark markings covering its head, body, and every fin.

Glass Catfish

A small Southeast Asian catfish with an almost fully transparent body that reveals its skeleton and internal organs.