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.
Splash Tetra
A small South American tetra famous for its extraordinary reproductive behavior of leaping out of water in pairs to lay eggs on overhanging leaves.
freshwater
Schoolmaster Snapper
The schoolmaster snapper is a yellow-tinged reef snapper of the western Atlantic, recognized by faint pale bars and a blue line beneath the eye, common around reefs, mangroves, and seagrass.
reefCeylon Killifish
An elongated, surface-dwelling killifish endemic to Sri Lanka, showing an orange-red body with fine dark speckling and iridescent scale flecking.
freshwater
Thresher Shark
An unmistakable shark with an extraordinarily long, whip-like upper tail lobe used to stun schooling prey, found roaming temperate and tropical open oceans worldwide.
cartilaginous
Cory Catfish
A small, armored South American bottom-dweller with a bronze-green sheen, known for shoaling and constant substrate foraging.
freshwater
Whitespotted Puffer
A common Indo-Pacific reef puffer with a dark olive-brown body scattered with small white spots and distinctive dark rings around its eyes, gills, and pectoral fin bases.
reef
Tuna
A fast, powerfully built open-ocean fish capable of high-speed sustained swimming, ranging across warm and temperate seas worldwide in large migratory schools.
pelagic
Uaru
A large, deep-bodied Amazonian cichlid known for a dramatic color change with age, from a striped juvenile pattern to a mottled brown adult, and for a rare parenting behavior in which parents feed their fry a body-slime secretion.
freshwater
Spotfin Lionfish
A true lionfish with elongated, spotted pectoral fin rays and reddish-brown bars, found resting in reef crevices by day across the Indo-Pacific.
reef
Spotted Scat
A deep-bodied, disc-shaped fish covered in dark spots over an olive-to-silver background, common in Indo-Pacific estuaries and harbors. Its bold pattern and spiny dorsal fin make it easy to pick out among schooling brackish fish.
brackish
Spanish Sardine
A schooling pelagic fish found throughout warm Atlantic and Mediterranean waters, the Spanish Sardine is larger than the related European Sardine and forms an important forage species across its wide tropical to subtropical range.
pelagic
Purple Spotted Gudgeon
A stocky, olive-brown Australian freshwater fish covered in scattered iridescent purple-blue spots, favoring weedy, slow-moving streams and lagoons.
freshwater
Sterlet
The sterlet is the smallest widespread sturgeon species, a slender freshwater fish of Ponto-Caspian rivers known for its long, thin, upturned snout with fringed barbels.
freshwater
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
Star Puffer
One of the largest pufferfish species, the star puffer is covered edge-to-edge in small black spots and roams Indo-Pacific reefs and lagoons feeding on sponges, tunicates, and hard-shelled prey.
reef
Silver Dollar
A disc-shaped, silvery Amazonian characin closely related to piranhas but almost entirely herbivorous, known for grazing flooded forest vegetation.
freshwater
Percula Clownfish
A bright orange anemonefish with three bold white bars outlined in black, famous for its symbiotic partnership with sea anemones on western Pacific reefs.
reef
Meagre
The Meagre is a large, golden-silver sciaenid of the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean, among the biggest members of the drum family.
saltwater
Loach Goby
The Loach Goby is an elongated, flat-bodied fish that clings to rocks in fast-flowing Indo-Pacific streams, combining goby and loach-like features.
freshwater
High-hat
A striking black-and-white striped reef drum related to the jackknife-fish, easily recognized by its tall, elongated dorsal fin.
reef
Guineafowl Pufferfish
The Guineafowl Pufferfish is a variably colored reef puffer, most often dark brown to black with small white spots, resembling the plumage of a guineafowl bird.
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
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
Blackfin Tuna
The smallest member of the true tuna genus, this fast schooling fish sports a dark blue-black back and yellow, black-edged finlets, ranging through warm western Atlantic waters.
pelagic