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.
Rohu
A large South Asian river carp with a streamlined, silvery-grey body, widely farmed across the Indian subcontinent as a major aquaculture species and prized angling fish.
freshwater
Northern Sea Robin
A bottom-dwelling western Atlantic fish with an armored head and huge wing-like pectoral fins, using leg-like fin rays to walk across the seafloor.
saltwater
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.
freshwater
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.
freshwater
Longnose Chimaera
A deep-water cartilaginous fish related to sharks, marked by an unmistakably long pointed snout and a slender tapering body cruising continental slopes far below sunlight.
cartilaginous
Houndfish
A large, elongated needlefish with a crocodile-like beak of sharp teeth, found cruising just below the surface of warm coastal waters worldwide in search of small fish.
saltwater
Fathead Minnow
A small, hardy North American minnow famous as baitfish and a standard toxicology test species, able to survive low-oxygen, turbid water most fish avoid.
freshwater
European Pilchard (Sardine)
A small, silvery schooling fish found along the eastern Atlantic coast and throughout the Mediterranean, forming vast shoals that graze on plankton near the surface of coastal waters.
pelagicDragonfish
Dragonfish are elongated, predatory deep-sea fish with needle-sharp teeth and a long luminous chin barbel used to lure prey in the permanently dark mesopelagic zone.
deepsea
Ctenopoma (African Bushfish)
A stealthy, mottled labyrinth fish from West and Central Africa that ambushes small prey from cover and can gulp air to survive in oxygen-poor swamps.
freshwater
Chinese Sturgeon
The Chinese sturgeon is a critically endangered anadromous fish that spends its adult life in coastal Chinese seas before migrating far up the Yangtze River to spawn.
brackish
Clown Loach
A brightly colored, boldly striped Indonesian freshwater fish popular in aquariums, notable for its social, playful behavior and slow growth to a surprisingly large adult size.
freshwater
Brook Silverside
A slender, nearly translucent freshwater fish of eastern North American lakes and rivers, known for its needle-like beak and habit of skipping across the water's surface.
freshwater
Atlantic Mackerel
A fast-swimming schooling fish with iridescent blue-green wavy stripes across its back, found in cold and temperate waters on both sides of the North Atlantic.
pelagic
African Lungfish
An eel-like freshwater fish capable of breathing air and surviving months buried in dried mud during droughts, one of the most drought-resistant vertebrates known.
freshwater
Tuna
A fast, powerfully built open-ocean fish capable of high-speed sustained swimming, ranging across warm and temperate seas worldwide in large migratory schools.
pelagicMexican Lamprey
The Mexican lamprey is a jawless fish endemic to freshwater rivers of the central Mexican highlands, one of the few lamprey species found so far south in North America.
freshwater
Topsmelt
A slender, silvery schooling fish common in bays, estuaries, and kelp beds along the eastern Pacific coast, often seen shoaling near the surface in large numbers.
saltwater
Sixline Soapfish
A dark brown-black Indo-Pacific reef fish marked with six pale horizontal stripes, known for secreting a bitter, toxic skin mucus as a defense mechanism.
reefShort-headed Lamprey
The short-headed lamprey is an anadromous, jawless fish of southeastern Australia and Tasmania, recognized by its notably short head and a marine parasitic phase before spawning in rivers.
brackish
Russian Sturgeon
The Russian sturgeon is a large, critically endangered anadromous fish of the Caspian, Black, and Azov Sea basins, known for its short blunt snout and robust armored body.
brackish
Scaled Sardine
A small, deep-bodied silvery fish that forms dense inshore schools along the Western Atlantic coast, easily confused with other small herring-like species.
saltwater
Piranha
A deep-bodied South American river fish famed for its sharp interlocking teeth and coordinated group feeding behavior, though most species are opportunistic scavengers.
freshwater
Reef Stonefish
The reef stonefish is the classic, rock-mimicking stonefish of coral reef flats, considered one of the most venomous fish in the sea and virtually invisible against reef rubble.
reef