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.
White Crappie
A silvery, deep-bodied panfish with faint vertical bars along its sides, common in reservoirs and turbid rivers of the central United States and prized for its schooling habits and delicate mouth.
freshwater
Spotfin Flyingfish
A slender, dark-backed flyingfish with long, spotted pectoral "wings" that let it glide above the ocean surface to escape predators. Common throughout tropical and warm-temperate seas worldwide.
pelagic
Spotted Scorpionfish
A heavily camouflaged reef fish with mottled brown, red, and white patterning and venomous dorsal spines, blending seamlessly into coral rubble and rocky bottom across the western Atlantic.
reef
Silver Mono
The plain, uniformly silver adult form of the mono, a coin-shaped estuarine fish that loses its faint juvenile eye-bar as it matures. Common in schools around Indo-Pacific mangroves, jetties, and harbors.
brackish
Peacock Wrasse
A colorful Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic wrasse whose males display vivid green-blue bodies with orange spots and blue facial stripes, commonly seen darting among rocky reefs and seagrass beds.
saltwater
Mudskipper
An amphibious goby that spends much of its life out of water, hopping across mudflats on muscular pectoral fins. Bulging, periscope-like eyes let it watch for predators while it hunts and defends its burrow.
brackish
Mahseer
A powerful, large-scaled carp of fast Himalayan rivers, the golden mahseer is prized as one of the hardest-fighting freshwater fish, with a thick, muscular body built for holding in strong current.
freshwater
Mahi-Mahi
A fast-growing, brilliantly colored open-ocean fish that gathers around floating debris and sargassum, easily recognized by its iridescent blue-green-gold body and long continuous dorsal fin.
pelagic
Longnose Butterflyfish
A bright yellow butterflyfish with a greatly elongated snout used to pluck small invertebrates from reef crevices. It is one of the most widespread and recognizable butterflyfish across the Indo-Pacific.
reef
Golden Topminnow
A small southeastern U.S. killifish whose males show golden-yellow coloring with iridescent blue-green spotting. It favors quiet, well-vegetated ponds, swamps, and slow backwaters.
freshwater
Robust Ghost Pipefish
The robust ghost pipefish is the largest species in its family, with a plainer, leaf-like body that mimics drifting seagrass, algae, or sargassum rather than the frillier crinoid-mimicking patterns of its relatives.
reef
Honeycomb Cowfish
A boxy, rigid-bodied cowfish of the tropical western Atlantic, its bluish-green scales outlined in dark hexagonal borders creating a honeycomb pattern, with a pair of forward-pointing horns above the eyes.
reef
Harlequin Tuskfish
A vividly colored wrasse with a turquoise-blue body crossed by orange bars and prominent protruding tusk-like teeth used to crush hard-shelled prey. It inhabits coral-rich reef slopes across the western Pacific.
reef