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.
Green Neon Tetra
A Rio Negro blackwater characin closely related to the Neon Tetra, identified by its shimmering blue-green stripe and limited rear-body red coloration.
freshwater
Buenos Aires Tetra
A hardy, cold-tolerant characin from the Parana-La Plata basin, prized in aquariums for its active schooling behavior and subtropical resilience.
freshwater
Blind Cave Tetra
A ghostly pink, eyeless cavefish descended from surface-dwelling Mexican tetras, adapted over millennia to life in total darkness within Mexican limestone caves.
freshwater
X-ray Tetra
A translucent coastal South American characin whose see-through body and bold black-white-yellow fin markings make it instantly recognizable.
brackish
Von Rio Tetra
A small, fiery-red tetra native to coastal rivers near Rio de Janeiro, notable for two dark shoulder spots and deep red hindquarters.
freshwater
Silver Tip Tetra
A bronze-bodied Brazilian characin notable for lacking an adipose fin and for its bright white-tipped fins, active in fast-moving shoals.
freshwater
Bleeding Heart Tetra
A deep-bodied upper Amazon characin marked by a small red 'bleeding heart' spot and, in males, a dramatic elongated dorsal fin.
freshwater
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.
freshwater
Black Drum
The Black Drum is a deep-bodied, greyish-black sciaenid with distinctive chin barbels, found in estuaries and coastal waters from the mid-Atlantic to Argentina.
brackish
Black Molly
A solid-black, selectively bred color strain of the common molly, the black molly is one of the most recognizable and widely kept aquarium livebearers.
freshwater
Black Swallower
A small deep-sea fish renowned for an extraordinarily distensible stomach that lets it engulf prey several times its own body length and mass in a single strike.
deepsea
Black Jack
The Black Jack is a large, uniformly dark trevally that forms big schools around offshore tropical reefs and current-swept drop-offs across the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans.
reef
Black Crappie
A silvery panfish mottled with irregular dark speckling, closely related to the White Crappie but preferring clearer water, and one of the most popular schooling panfish in North America.
freshwaterBlack Hagfish
The black hagfish is a jawless, deep-sea scavenger found on the muddy continental slope off the Pacific coast of North America, notable for its uniformly dark coloration.
deepsea
Black Marlin
A massive, powerful billfish of the Indo-Pacific known for its rigid, immovable pectoral fins and status as one of the largest bony fish in the ocean.
pelagic
Black Rockfish
A dark, deep-bodied schooling rockfish common over rocky reefs and kelp forests along the Pacific coast, often seen in large surface-oriented aggregations.
saltwater
Black Ghost Knifefish
A uniformly black, blade-shaped freshwater fish that swims using a long undulating ventral fin and navigates using a weak electric field generated along its body.
freshwater
Black Sea Bass
A stocky, dark-bodied grouper relative common on rocky reefs and wrecks along the temperate western Atlantic coast, easily recognized by its high arched back and blunt head.
reef
Black Sea Bream
A deep-bodied porgy of the Mediterranean and Eastern Atlantic, notable for males that excavate and guard nest depressions on the seabed during spawning.
saltwater
Variable Platyfish
A close relative of the common platy, the variable platyfish is native to northeastern Mexico and shows exceptional natural variation in color and pattern, giving rise to many popular aquarium strains.
freshwater
Southern Platyfish
The full common name for the widely kept platy, the southern platyfish is a small, hardy livebearer native to Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala, prized for its color variety and easy breeding.
freshwater
Blackwing Flyingfish
A stocky, wide-ranging flyingfish named for its large dusky-black pectoral wings, found gliding above open ocean surface waters across much of the world's warm and temperate seas.
pelagic
White Cloud Mountain Minnow
A hardy, cold-tolerant minnow with a metallic green-gold stripe and red-tinted fins, native to cool mountain streams in southern China.
freshwater
Pacific Blackdragon
An eel-like deep-sea dragonfish whose females are entirely jet-black with a long chin barbel, while the tiny, non-feeding males look almost nothing like them.
deepsea