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.
Undulate Ray
A patterned skate marked with wavy dark bands across its back, found on sandy and rocky bottoms from the English Channel to the Mediterranean and West Africa.
cartilaginous
Slender Giant Moray
The longest of all moray eel species, this extremely elongated, olive-grey eel patrols muddy estuaries and mangrove channels across the Indo-Pacific rather than typical coral reef.
brackish
Julii Corydoras
A small, finely spotted armored catfish from coastal Brazil, frequently confused in the trade with the very similar Corydoras trilineatus.
freshwater
Rubber Lip Pleco
The Rubber Lip Pleco is a South American armored catfish with thick, fleshy lips adapted for grazing algae off rocks in fast-flowing rivers.
freshwater
Madtom
A small North American freshwater catfish that hides under rocks by day and carries venomous pectoral and dorsal spines used defensively when handled or threatened.
freshwater
Zebra Pleco
A small, strikingly patterned armored catfish endemic to the Rio Xingu in Brazil, prized in the aquarium trade for its bold black-and-white stripes but critically endangered by dam construction.
freshwater
Hogfish
A large western-Atlantic wrasse with a pig-like snout and long front dorsal spines, able to rapidly change color.
reef
Rock Cook
A tiny olive-brown wrasse of northeastern Atlantic kelp reefs, the Rock Cook forages among rocks and crevices and can change sex during its lifetime.
saltwater
Weather Loach
An elongated, eel-shaped East Asian loach known for becoming unusually active before storms, a behavior tied to its sensitivity to changes in barometric pressure.
freshwater
Ribbon Eel
The Ribbon Eel is a slender, brightly colored moray that changes from a black juvenile to a blue male to a yellow female over its lifetime while anchored in a sand burrow.
reef
Mummichog
A stout, hardy killifish common in salt marshes and estuaries along the North American Atlantic coast, well known for its extreme tolerance of changing salinity and oxygen levels.
brackish
Sweetlips
Sweetlips is the common name for boldly striped reef fish of the genus Plectorhinchus, exemplified by the Oriental sweetlips, known for thick fleshy lips and dramatic juvenile-to-adult color change.
reef
Peacock Flounder
A tropical Atlantic flatfish famous for rapid color-changing camouflage and a pattern of small blue rings on a sandy brown body, with both eyes clustered on its upper left side.
reef
Nassau Grouper
A stocky Caribbean reef grouper known for its ability to rapidly change color and pattern, from pale to dark barred phases, and for forming large seasonal spawning aggregations now heavily protected.
reef
Bluehead Wrasse
A small, abundant Caribbean reef fish famous for changing color and sex as it matures, with terminal males developing a striking blue head and green body. It is one of the most numerous fish on western Atlantic reefs.
reef
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
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