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.
Silverstripe Halfbeak
A slender halfbeak marked by a bright silver lateral stripe, found skimming the surface of tropical Indo-Pacific reef lagoons.
reef
Amberjack
A powerful, deep-bodied jack that patrols reefs and wrecks worldwide in warm seas, known for its stubborn fighting strength and amber-tinted flanks.
reef
Betta
A small, vividly colored Southeast Asian freshwater fish famed for its flowing fins and the intense territorial aggression of males toward rivals.
freshwater
Trumpetfish
A long, tube-bodied ambush predator that hovers motionless among reef structures, often drifting vertically to mimic a stray branch or gorgonian coral before striking small fish.
reef
Rock Cod
Rock cod is a common name for numerous Sebastes rockfish species found on rocky Pacific reefs, identified by their deep, spiny-finned body and mottled camouflage coloration.
saltwater
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
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
Penguin Tetra
An Amazonian characin recognized by its bold black tail stripe and unusual head-up swimming posture resembling a penguin's stance.
freshwater
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.
freshwater
Flyingfish
The common name for fish of the family Exocoetidae, known for gliding above the ocean surface on enlarged, wing-like fins; the Flyingfish (*Exocoetus volitans*) represents this widespread tropical group.
pelagic
Cuckoo Wrasse
A vividly patterned wrasse of the Northeast Atlantic and Mediterranean, with males displaying bold blue and orange stripes and females a softer pink patterned with black-edged white spots.
reef
Napoleon Wrasse
A massive, thick-lipped coral reef wrasse with a distinctive bulging forehead hump and blue-green maze-like facial markings, among the largest reef fish in the Indo-Pacific.
reef
Clownfish
A small, brilliantly orange reef fish with three white bars, famous for its symbiotic partnership with sea anemones on Indo-Pacific coral reefs.
reef
Midas Blenny
An elongated, brightly colored blenny that ranges from golden-yellow to blue-violet and often mimics the appearance and swimming style of similarly colored basslets. It hovers near reef crevices along drop-offs.
reef
Fingerfish
Another common name for the disc-shaped Mono, called Fingerfish for its thin, laterally compressed body. It schools in Indo-Pacific estuaries and coastal waters, flashing bright silver as it moves.
brackish
Bicolor Blenny
A small reef blenny sharply split into a dark front half and bright orange rear half, sheltering in rubble crevices.
reef
Sheepshead
A deep-bodied coastal fish easily recognized by bold black vertical bars and prominent human-like teeth, common around docks, jetties, and oyster reefs along the western Atlantic.
saltwater
Stingray
A flat, diamond-shaped cartilaginous fish that spends much of its time partly buried in sand on shallow tropical seafloors, related to sharks and equipped with a long, whip-like venomous-spined tail.
cartilaginous
Mandarinfish
A tiny, vividly patterned reef fish covered in a maze-like network of blue, orange, and green, prized as one of the most colorful fish in the ocean.
reef
Pennant Coralfish
A black-and-white butterflyfish relative known for its long pennant-like dorsal filament, often mistaken for a juvenile Moorish idol as it drifts in loose reef aggregations.
reefSailfin Flyingfish
A small, two-winged flyingfish with a tall, sail-like dorsal fin and blunt snout, found gliding over warm coastal and offshore surface waters worldwide.
pelagic
Pipefish
A slender, elongated relative of the seahorse with a rigid, ring-plated body and tubular snout, commonly found camouflaged among seagrass and algae in coastal waters worldwide.
saltwaterCalifornia Flyingfish
The largest flyingfish species in the eastern Pacific, this stout, silvery glider uses its oversized wing-like fins to skim above the waves off California and Mexico.
pelagic
Bandwing Flyingfish
A small, slender flyingfish of the tropical Atlantic, identified by the dark crossbands on its otherwise translucent pectoral wing fins as it glides over the open sea.
pelagic