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.
Rachovi Killifish
A vividly colored annual killifish from coastal Mozambique, with males showing a turquoise body and a tricolor red-yellow-blue tail. It lives in temporary floodplain pools near Beira.
freshwater
Fingerfish
Another common name for the disc-shaped Mono, called Fingerfish for its thin, laterally compressed body. It schools in Indo-Pacific estuaries and coastal waters, flashing bright silver as it moves.
brackish
Yellow Boxfish
The Yellow Boxfish is a cube-shaped reef fish, bright yellow with black spots as a juvenile, that swims with slow, hovering movements thanks to its rigid armored body.
reef
Molly
A hardy, adaptable livebearer native to Mexico and Central America, the common molly thrives in fresh, brackish, and even marine water and is one of the most popular beginner aquarium fish.
freshwater
Atlantic Needlefish
A long, slender silvery fish with a needle-like toothy beak, common in coastal and estuarine waters of the western Atlantic where it hunts small fish near the surface.
brackish
Telescopefish
A slender deep-sea fish named for its forward-directed, tubular telescoping eyes, which provide sharp binocular vision to detect faint prey silhouettes in near-total darkness.
deepsea
Sheepshead
A deep-bodied coastal fish easily recognized by bold black vertical bars and prominent human-like teeth, common around docks, jetties, and oyster reefs along the western Atlantic.
saltwater
Narrow-barred Spanish Mackerel
A large, fast-swimming mackerel of the Indo-Pacific marked by numerous narrow, wavy dark bars running down its silvery sides.
pelagic
Mono
A shimmering, disc-shaped fish with a strongly flattened body and tall, angular fins, native to Indo-Pacific estuaries. Adults school in brackish coastal waters and shift gradually toward full seawater as they mature.
brackish
Atlantic Flyingfish
A streamlined, silvery flyingfish of the tropical Atlantic that uses its oversized wing-like pectoral fins to glide over the surface for long distances to escape predators.
pelagic
Torpedo Ray
The largest of the electric rays, a powerful bottom-dweller capable of delivering an electric shock strong enough to stun sizeable fish.
cartilaginous
Margined Flyingfish
A large flyingfish with dark, blue-margined wing-like pectoral fins that glides across open tropical and subtropical seas.
pelagic
Bichir
The bichir is a primitive, air-breathing freshwater fish of African rivers and swamps, genus Polypterus, known for its snake-like armored body and spiny dorsal finlets.
freshwater
Napoleon Wrasse
A massive, thick-lipped coral reef wrasse with a distinctive bulging forehead hump and blue-green maze-like facial markings, among the largest reef fish in the Indo-Pacific.
reef
Freshwater Butterflyfish
The freshwater butterflyfish is a surface-dwelling African fish with huge wing-like pectoral fins that let it glide above the water to snatch insects, giving it its butterfly-like name.
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
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
Chain Pickerel
A slender, elongated ambush predator with a distinctive dark chain-like pattern over green sides, common in weedy lakes and sluggish rivers of the eastern United States.
freshwater
Candiru
A tiny, translucent Amazonian catfish that feeds by attaching to the gills of larger fish and consuming their blood, one of the few parasitic vertebrates known.
freshwater
Blackwing Flyingfish
A stocky, wide-ranging flyingfish named for its large dusky-black pectoral wings, found gliding above open ocean surface waters across much of the world's warm and temperate seas.
pelagic
Ocellaris Clownfish
A small orange-and-white clownfish that lives in a mutualistic partnership with sea anemones on Indo-Pacific reefs. It is one of the most familiar reef fish species due to its bright coloring and anemone-dwelling behavior.
reef
Arowana
The arowana is a large, ancient freshwater fish of the Amazon basin, genus Osteoglossum, known for its upturned mouth, long fins, and ability to leap for surface prey.
freshwater
Nile Perch
A large, silvery-grey freshwater predator with a distinctive dark eye and deep body, native to major African river systems and infamous for its ecological impact after introduction to Lake Victoria.
freshwater
Glass Knifefish
A slender, near-transparent South American fish that swims using a continuous rippling fin and emits a weak electric field to sense its surroundings.
freshwater