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.
Eastern Mosquitofish
Native to the Atlantic coastal plain of the eastern United States, the eastern mosquitofish is nearly identical to its western relative and has likewise been widely introduced worldwide for mosquito control.
freshwater
Cottonmouth Jack
A plain, silvery-grey deep-water jack named for the pale interior of its mouth, found over continental shelves and slopes across tropical oceans worldwide.
pelagic
Crimson-spotted Rainbowfish
A small, deep-bodied rainbowfish native to coastal rivers of eastern Australia, recognized by its iridescent blue-green flanks marked with rows of crimson-red spots.
freshwater
Eagle Ray
A diamond-shaped ray with a distinctive protruding duck-like snout, often seen gliding gracefully near the seafloor in coastal waters of the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.
cartilaginous
Cubera Snapper
The largest snapper in the Atlantic, a heavy-bodied reef predator with oversized canine teeth. Adults hold near deep ledges and wrecks, while juveniles grow up in mangrove nurseries.
reef
Delhezi Bichir
A boldly barred Congo Basin fish with a series of dark vertical bands along its yellow-tan body and a row of spiny finlets along its back.
freshwater
Emperor Angelfish
The Emperor Angelfish is a large, boldly striped reef fish with alternating blue and yellow horizontal lines and a dark mask across the eyes, one of the most recognizable angelfish in the Indo-Pacific.
reef
Chinese High-Fin Banded Shark
Despite its name, the Chinese High-Fin Banded Shark is not a shark at all but a large freshwater sucker native to China's Yangtze River basin, known for its tall sail-like dorsal fin.
freshwater
Bronze Corydoras
A hardy, metallic-sheened armored catfish that forages along the substrate and is one of the most widely kept bottom-dwelling aquarium fish.
freshwater
Cleaner Wrasse
The Cleaner Wrasse is a slender fish with a bold black horizontal stripe and blue body, famous for removing parasites and dead tissue from other reef fish at dedicated cleaning stations.
reef
Brill
Brill is a left-eyed flatfish closely related to turbot, distinguished by its more elongated oval body, smooth scaled skin, and mottled brownish camouflage pattern.
saltwater
Common Skate
One of the largest skates in the world, now Critically Endangered after severe historical overfishing across its North Atlantic range.
cartilaginous
Bonefish
A silvery, torpedo-shaped fish of shallow tropical flats, nicknamed the 'grey ghost' for its uncanny ability to vanish against sandy bottoms.
saltwater
Chestnut Lamprey
The chestnut lamprey is a freshwater parasitic lamprey of central North America named for its reddish-brown coloration, native to Mississippi and Great Lakes basin rivers and lakes.
freshwater
Brook Lamprey
The brook lamprey is a small, non-parasitic freshwater lamprey of Pacific Northwest streams that never feeds as an adult, spending most of its life buried as a filter-feeding larva.
freshwater
Common Pleco
A large, heavily armored South American catfish with a suckermouth used to graze algae and biofilm from rocks and submerged wood.
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
Coelacanth
The coelacanth is an ancient, deep-dwelling lobe-finned fish once known only from fossils, famously rediscovered alive off South Africa in 1938.
deepsea
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
Common Sole
The common sole is a slender, right-eyed flatfish of European coastal waters, recognizable by its elongated oval body and small, curved mouth adapted for nighttime foraging.
saltwater
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
China Rockfish
Easily recognized by a bold yellow stripe running down its black body, the China rockfish is a small, secretive reef dweller of the northeastern Pacific.
saltwater
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
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
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
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
Chalk Bass
A tiny bicolored sea bass with a lavender-blue head and orange rear body, often seen darting over Caribbean rubble reefs.
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
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.
pelagicCusk 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
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
Cory Catfish
A small, armored South American bottom-dweller with a bronze-green sheen, known for shoaling and constant substrate foraging.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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