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.
Mozambique Tilapia
A hardy, deep-bodied cichlid native to southeastern Africa, the Mozambique tilapia tolerates a huge range of salinities and temperatures and has become one of the world's most widely introduced freshwater fish.
freshwater
Nile Tilapia
A deep-bodied African cichlid with bold stripes on its tail fin, the Nile tilapia is one of the world's most widely distributed freshwater fish through aquaculture and introductions.
freshwater
Black Drum
The Black Drum is a deep-bodied, greyish-black sciaenid with distinctive chin barbels, found in estuaries and coastal waters from the mid-Atlantic to Argentina.
brackish
Black Molly
A solid-black, selectively bred color strain of the common molly, the black molly is one of the most recognizable and widely kept aquarium livebearers.
freshwater
Black Swallower
A small deep-sea fish renowned for an extraordinarily distensible stomach that lets it engulf prey several times its own body length and mass in a single strike.
deepsea
Black Jack
The Black Jack is a large, uniformly dark trevally that forms big schools around offshore tropical reefs and current-swept drop-offs across the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans.
reef
Black Rockfish
A dark, deep-bodied schooling rockfish common over rocky reefs and kelp forests along the Pacific coast, often seen in large surface-oriented aggregations.
saltwater
Black Crappie
A silvery panfish mottled with irregular dark speckling, closely related to the White Crappie but preferring clearer water, and one of the most popular schooling panfish in North America.
freshwaterBlack Hagfish
The black hagfish is a jawless, deep-sea scavenger found on the muddy continental slope off the Pacific coast of North America, notable for its uniformly dark coloration.
deepsea
Black Marlin
A massive, powerful billfish of the Indo-Pacific known for its rigid, immovable pectoral fins and status as one of the largest bony fish in the ocean.
pelagic
Black Neon Tetra
A small Brazilian tetra marked by a bold black horizontal stripe paired with a shimmering silvery-white line above it, a popular schooling fish in freshwater aquariums.
freshwater
Black Sea Bass
A stocky, dark-bodied grouper relative common on rocky reefs and wrecks along the temperate western Atlantic coast, easily recognized by its high arched back and blunt head.
reef
Black Sea Bream
A deep-bodied porgy of the Mediterranean and Eastern Atlantic, notable for males that excavate and guard nest depressions on the seabed during spawning.
saltwater
Black Ghost Knifefish
A uniformly black, blade-shaped freshwater fish that swims using a long undulating ventral fin and navigates using a weak electric field generated along its body.
freshwater
Black Skirt Tetra
A silvery-gray tetra with a flowing black skirt-like tail and fins, whose dark coloration typically fades somewhat as the fish matures.
freshwater
Black Phantom Tetra
A gray-black Paraguay basin characin known for its dramatic sail-like dorsal fin displays and mild social hierarchy behavior among males.
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
Pacific Blackdragon
An eel-like deep-sea dragonfish whose females are entirely jet-black with a long chin barbel, while the tiny, non-feeding males look almost nothing like them.
deepsea
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
Antarctic Cod
Antarctic cod is a bottom-dwelling notothenioid fish of the Southern Ocean, adapted to near-freezing water and recognized by its mottled brown, camouflaged body and broad head.
saltwater
Greenland Halibut
A cold-water, deep-sea North Atlantic and Arctic flatfish with a dark body on both sides, a large toothy mouth, and a less flattened posture than typical flounders.
deepsea
Blackstripe Topminnow
A slender freshwater killifish of the central and eastern U.S., identified by a single solid black stripe running from snout to tail. It inhabits quiet pools and slow stream reaches.
freshwater
Blackbarred Halfbeak
A silvery halfbeak marked with faint dark vertical bars, common over seagrass beds and reef flats across the Indo-Pacific.
reef
Barred Halfbeak
A schooling, seagrass-associated halfbeak of the Indo-Pacific with a long, red-tipped lower jaw and faint dark bars along its silvery flanks.
saltwater