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.
Chub Mackerel
A widespread schooling mackerel found in temperate and subtropical seas worldwide, marked by irregular dark bars on its back and faint spots along its lower flanks.
pelagic
Cuckoo Catfish
A spotted African catfish from Lake Tanganyika famous for a brood-parasitic strategy in which it sneaks its own eggs into the mouths of incubating cichlids.
freshwater
Corkwing Wrasse
A small, colorful European wrasse identified by a dark comma-shaped spot behind the eye and a dark blotch on the tail base.
saltwater
Devil Scorpionfish
A master of camouflage, the devil scorpionfish blends into reef rubble until threatened, when it flashes brightly colored inner fins as a startle display.
reef
Croaking Gourami
A small Southeast Asian gourami capable of producing an audible croaking sound using modified pectoral fin muscles, marked with iridescent blue-green stripes and spots along a brownish body.
freshwater
Creek Chub
A stout, adaptable minnow common in small North American creeks, the creek chub is a dominant predator in headwater streams, feeding on insects and small fish, and known for building spawning nest mounds.
freshwaterCusk Eel
An elongated, eel-shaped deep-sea fish whose family holds the record for the deepest fish ever documented, recovered from a trench nearly 8,400 meters down.
deepsea
Cornetfish
An extremely elongated, needle-thin fish with a whip-like tail filament, the Cornetfish hovers near reefs and seagrass, using its long tubular snout to snap up small fish.
reef
Cory Catfish
A small, armored South American bottom-dweller with a bronze-green sheen, known for shoaling and constant substrate foraging.
freshwater
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
Cowfish
A horned relative of the boxfish, identified by paired forward-pointing spines above the eyes and a rigid box-shaped body; found in Indo-Pacific lagoons and seagrass beds.
reef
Combtail Gourami
A robust Sri Lankan gourami named for the comb-like fringe along its dorsal, anal, and tail fins, more aggressive and predatory than most smaller gourami relatives.
freshwater
Crucian Carp
A hardy, deep-bodied European carp closely related to goldfish, remarkable for its ability to survive winters in oxygen-depleted ponds by producing alcohol as a metabolic byproduct.
freshwater
Butterfly Ray
A ray with an exceptionally wide, flattened disc and short tail, resembling a butterfly in outline as it glides low over sandy coastal seabeds.
cartilaginous
Cuban Gar
A large, endemic Cuban gar with a broad alligator-like snout, now considered vulnerable due to its restricted freshwater range on the island.
freshwater
Caspian Lamprey
The Caspian lamprey is a parasitic, jawless fish that lives in the brackish Caspian Sea and migrates into tributary rivers of Russia, Iran, and neighboring countries to spawn.
brackish
Chinese Algae Eater
An elongated Southeast Asian freshwater fish with a specialized sucker mouth used to graze algae from rocks, becoming increasingly territorial as it matures.
freshwater
California Halibut
A large, active eastern Pacific flatfish with a big toothy mouth, uniform brown coloration, and an unusual mix of left- and right-eyed individuals within the species.
saltwater
Clown Tang
A vividly striped surgeonfish with alternating blue, black, and yellow horizontal lines, one of the most aggressively territorial herbivores on shallow Indo-Pacific reef crests.
reef
Chalk Bass
A tiny bicolored sea bass with a lavender-blue head and orange rear body, often seen darting over Caribbean rubble reefs.
reef
Chocolate Gourami
A small, sensitive Southeast Asian blackwater specialist with a rich chocolate-brown body crossed by pale cream bands, notable as one of the few gouramis that broods its eggs in the mouth.
freshwater
Cero Mackerel
A slender, fast-swimming mackerel of Caribbean and western Atlantic waters, identified by a bronze-yellow stripe and rows of yellow-orange spots along its silvery sides.
pelagic
Cisco
Cisco, also known as lake herring, are slender silvery relatives of whitefish that form large open-water schools in the cold lakes of the northern United States and Canada, feeding mainly on plankton.
freshwater
Bumblebee Goby
The Bumblebee Goby is a tiny, boldly banded fish resembling its namesake insect, found in brackish mangrove and estuarine waters of Southeast Asia.
brackish
Clarkii Clownfish
A hardy, variably colored anemonefish found across the widest range of any clownfish species, typically dark brown-orange with three white bars, and known for hosting in many different anemone species.
reef
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
Chinese Paddlefish
The Chinese paddlefish was a giant, sword-snouted freshwater fish once found in the Yangtze River, declared extinct in the early 2020s after decades of decline.
freshwater
Bull Rout
Known as the shorthorn sculpin elsewhere, the Bull Rout is a camouflaged, spiny-headed fish common in cold North Atlantic tide pools and rocky shores.
saltwater
Common Archerfish
A deep-bodied, silvery fish famed for spitting jets of water to knock insects off overhanging vegetation into the water.
brackish
Bull Trout
A large, cold-water char native to the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountains, requiring exceptionally cold, clean streams and listed as threatened across much of its range in the United States.
freshwater
Common Dace
A slender, silvery cyprinid of clean, fast-flowing rivers, the common dace forms active shoals in mid-water, darting to snatch drifting insects from the current.
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 Triggerfish
An unmistakable black-bodied Indo-Pacific triggerfish covered in bold white spots below, with yellow-orange lips; wedges into reef crevices using a locking dorsal spine.
reef
Chocolate Australe
A brown color form of the lyretail panchax, a small West-Central African killifish with fine carmine spotting and an elongated lyre-shaped tail. It lives in shaded forest streams near Gabon's coast.
freshwater
Climbing Perch
A hardy Southeast Asian labyrinth fish famous for its ability to breathe air and wriggle overland between water bodies using its spiny gill covers and pectoral fins.
freshwater
Common Dab
The common dab is a small, right-eyed flatfish of European shelf seas, identified by its rough, sandpapery skin and curved lateral line above the pectoral fin.
saltwater
Common Dragonet
A sand-dwelling northeastern Atlantic fish with striking sexual dimorphism, males growing a dramatically elongated dorsal fin and long tail streamers.
saltwater
Clown Killifish
A tiny, torpedo-shaped killifish from West African rainforest streams, patterned with alternating black and cream bands and a fiery red-and-blue tail resembling a tiny rocket.
freshwater
Colombian Tetra
A large, vividly rose-red characin native to northern Colombian rivers, notable for its bold coloration and confident schooling behavior.
freshwater
Convict Tang
A pale gray surgeonfish marked with six or seven bold black vertical bars, resembling a prisoner's uniform, that grazes algae in large schools.
reef
Chub
A robust, thick-shouldered cyprinid of European rivers, the chub is a wary predator-scavenger that lurks under banks and cover, feeding on anything from insects to small fish.
freshwater
Coney
The coney is a small, color-variable reef grouper of the tropical western Atlantic, occurring in reddish-brown, bicolor, or bright golden-yellow forms, always marked with fine blue spotting.
reef
Congo Tetra
A large, iridescent tetra from the Congo River basin, with shimmering blue-violet-gold flanks and, in males, a distinctive flowing, frayed tail fin.
freshwater
Cookiecutter Shark
A small, cigar-shaped deep-sea shark known for gouging round cookie-shaped plugs of flesh from much larger animals, including whales and other sharks.
deepsea
Cobia
A large, elongated, shark-like fish that roams warm coastal waters worldwide and often follows rays, turtles, and floating structure.
pelagic
Convict Blenny
An eel-like burrow-dweller whose black-and-white striped juveniles form dense swirling schools near the burrow mouth, while adults hide almost entirely underground.
reef
Chinook Salmon
The largest of the Pacific salmon species, prized for its size, known for long river migrations that can exceed a thousand miles.
freshwater
Common Roach
A widespread European freshwater fish with a silvery body and distinctive red-orange fins, forming large shoals in slow rivers, lakes, and canals.
freshwater