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.
Guitarfish
A shark-like ray with a flattened, guitar-shaped body that blends features of sharks and rays, common on sandy coastal seabeds of the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.
cartilaginous
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.
freshwaterHilsa Shad
An anadromous herring of the Bay of Bengal region, the Hilsa Shad undertakes long migrations up rivers such as the Ganges and Padma to spawn and holds major cultural significance across South Asia.
brackish
Harlequin Tuskfish
A vividly colored wrasse with a turquoise-blue body crossed by orange bars and prominent protruding tusk-like teeth used to crush hard-shelled prey. It inhabits coral-rich reef slopes across the western Pacific.
reefGulf Hagfish
The Gulf hagfish is a small, jawless scavenger found in deep offshore waters of the Gulf of Mexico, living on soft sediment far below the sunlit zone.
deepsea
Gulf Pipefish
The Gulf pipefish is a small, slender pipefish common in seagrass beds and estuaries around the Gulf of Mexico and southeastern United States, notable for tolerating salinities ranging from full seawater to nearly fresh water.
brackish
Hogchoker
A small, tough-skinned estuarine sole tolerant of fresh to salt water, with a mottled brown crossbanded body, rounded outline, and no visible pectoral fins.
brackish
Hogfish
A large western-Atlantic wrasse with a pig-like snout and long front dorsal spines, able to rapidly change color.
reef
Frontosa
A striking striped cichlid from Lake Tanganyika, notable for the bulging cranial hump adult males develop above their eyes.
freshwater
Hammerhead Shark
A shark instantly recognizable by its flattened, laterally extended hammer-shaped head, often seen in large daytime schools near seamounts and coastal areas.
cartilaginous
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.
freshwater
Honeycomb Moray
One of the largest and most strikingly marked moray eels, its pale body covered in bold black honeycomb-shaped blotches makes it instantly recognizable across Indo-Pacific reefs.
reef
Garden Eel
Garden Eels are slender, colony-forming eels that live permanently anchored in sandy burrows near reefs, swaying in the current as they catch drifting plankton.
reef
Kuhli Loach
An eel-like, nocturnal loach with a banded body that burrows through substrate in streams across Southeast Asia.
freshwater
Green Sturgeon
The green sturgeon is the most marine-adapted North American sturgeon, ranging widely along the Pacific coast and entering rivers only occasionally to spawn.
saltwater
Hedgehog Seahorse
One of the spiniest seahorses, the Hedgehog Seahorse is covered in numerous sharp, elongated body spines that give it a distinctly bristled silhouette against reef rubble.
reef
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.
freshwater
Halfbeak
The common name for slender, surface-swimming fish of the family Hemiramphidae, marked by a short upper jaw and a long, needle-like lower jaw; the Common Halfbeak represents the group.
saltwater
Giant Oceanic Manta Ray
The largest ray in the world, a black-and-white filter feeder with enormous triangular pectoral fins and distinctive cephalic lobes used to funnel plankton into its mouth.
cartilaginous
Gulf Kingfish
The palest and most silvery of the surf kingfishes, found in wave-swept sandy beaches from the mid-Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico.
saltwater
Giant Mudskipper
The largest common mudskipper species, a heavy-bodied, predatory amphibious goby that patrols mangrove mudflats across South and Southeast Asia.
brackishGuppy
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.
freshwater
French Angelfish
A large Caribbean reef angelfish with a jet-black body edged in bright yellow on each scale, giving adults a shimmering, chain-mail-like appearance.
reef
Grenadier
Grenadiers, or rattails, are deep-sea fish found on ocean slopes worldwide, unmistakable for their oversized head tapering into a long, thin, whip-like tail with no true tail fin.
deepsea
Flat Needlefish
A laterally flattened needlefish with a ribbon-like cross-section, patterned with dark blotches along its silvery flanks, found worldwide in warm coastal and offshore surface waters.
saltwater
Green Wrasse
A slender Mediterranean wrasse, often green to brownish, associated with seagrass meadows and rocky reefs.
saltwater
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.
freshwater
Grey Snapper
The grey snapper, also called mangrove snapper, is an adaptable western Atlantic species with a dark reddish-grey body and a dark streak through the eye, ranging from mangrove estuaries to coral reefs.
reef
Foureye Butterflyfish
A Caribbean butterflyfish with a large false eyespot near the tail and a real eye hidden by a dark bar.
reef
Greenland Halibut
A cold-water, deep-sea North Atlantic and Arctic flatfish with a dark body on both sides, a large toothy mouth, and a less flattened posture than typical flounders.
deepsea
Garfish
A long, silvery, needle-jawed fish of European coastal waters, instantly recognizable by its bright green backbone and slender, beak-like snout.
pelagic
Greenland Cod
The Greenland cod is a stocky, cold-adapted cod relative found in shallow coastal Arctic waters around Greenland and eastern Canada, distinguished by its deep body and short head.
saltwater
Flame Angelfish
The Flame Angelfish is a small, vivid orange-red dwarf angelfish marked with black vertical bars and blue-tipped fins, commonly seen darting among reef crevices in the Pacific.
reef
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.
freshwater
Frigate Mackerel
A small tuna-like fish with a distinctive dark, wavy tiger-stripe pattern on its upper back, found in warm oceanic waters worldwide.
pelagic
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.
freshwater
Firefish Goby
A slender white-and-orange reef fish with a tall, flag-like first dorsal fin, often seen hovering near its burrow on sandy slopes.
reef
Humphead Wrasse
A massive, long-lived Indo-Pacific reef wrasse known for the prominent bulging hump on its forehead and its role as one of the few predators of toxic crown-of-thorns starfish.
reef
French Grunt
The French grunt is a small, abundant reef fish of the Caribbean and western Atlantic, marked by narrow yellow stripes over a silvery-white body and known for forming dense daytime schools.
reef
Jaguar Cichlid
A large, powerfully built Central American predator whose irregular black leopard-like blotches over a pale body give it its common name.
freshwater
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.
freshwater
Kribensis
A small, colorful West African dwarf cichlid best known for the vivid magenta belly females display, especially during courtship.
freshwater
Green Jack
The Green Jack is a schooling eastern Pacific jack with a greenish-blue back, silvery sides, and yellowish lower fins, common in coastal surface waters.
pelagicJapanese Sardine
A schooling pelagic fish abundant in the waters around Japan, the Japanese Sardine undergoes dramatic multi-decade population cycles and forms one of the largest single-species biomasses in the northwest Pacific.
pelagic
Giant Trevally
The largest of the trevallies, a powerful, deep-bodied predator of Indo-Pacific reefs and lagoons known for its steep head profile and ferocious ambush strikes.
reef
Goldsinny Wrasse
A small reddish-brown wrasse marked by a black tail-base spot, the Goldsinny Wrasse patrols rocky Atlantic reefs and is known for picking parasites off other fish.
saltwater
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.
freshwater
Ghost Pipefish
Ghost pipefish are small, camouflaged reef fish related to true pipefish, named for their ability to nearly vanish against crinoids, algae, and seagrass. The family includes several species distinguished by body shape and coloration.
reef