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.
Southern Platyfish
The full common name for the widely kept platy, the southern platyfish is a small, hardy livebearer native to Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala, prized for its color variety and easy breeding.
freshwater
Spotted Bass
A compact black bass species with rows of small dark spots below the lateral line, native to the Mississippi and Gulf drainages and often found alongside Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass.
freshwater
Rock Cod
Rock cod is a common name for numerous Sebastes rockfish species found on rocky Pacific reefs, identified by their deep, spiny-finned body and mottled camouflage coloration.
saltwater
Redear Sunfish
A deep-bodied sunfish named for the bright red-orange margin on its black ear flap, notable for its specialized diet of snails and other mollusks in warm southern lakes and ponds.
freshwater
Rock Wrasse
A common temperate wrasse of California and Baja kelp forests, recognized by its elongated olive-green body, salmon-pink belly, and a dark saddle-like blotch near the tail.
saltwater
Peruvian Anchoveta
A small, slender schooling fish found in colossal numbers within the nutrient-rich Humboldt Current off Peru and Chile, considered one of the most abundant fish species on Earth.
pelagic
Red Bream
The red bream, or blackspot seabream, is a pink-tinged sparid with a dark shoulder spot that lives over rocky and sandy bottoms in the northeastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.
saltwater
Peacock Gudgeon
A vividly colored, peaceful gudgeon from Papua New Guinea, prized in aquariums for its blue-spangled body, orange fins, and calm temperament rare among small predatory fish.
freshwater
Oceanic Whitetip Shark
A robust open-ocean shark identified by its large, rounded, white-mottled fins, once one of the most abundant pelagic sharks but now heavily depleted across tropical open oceans worldwide.
pelagic
Merry Widow
A small, peaceful Central American livebearer with a translucent grayish body and a distinctive dark spot near the gill cover, popular among hobbyists for decades.
freshwater
Largetooth Sawfish
One of the largest sawfish species, uniquely able to travel far up freshwater rivers, now Critically Endangered and eliminated from most of its former circumtropical range.
cartilaginous
Japanese Eel
The Japanese Eel is an East Asian catadromous fish that migrates from freshwater rivers to offshore Pacific spawning grounds, and is now classified as Endangered.
freshwater
Largemouth Bass
A robust, olive-green freshwater fish with a distinctive dark lateral stripe and a very large mouth, one of North America's most popular sport fish now established worldwide.
freshwater
Leopard Wrasse
A small, strikingly patterned reef wrasse covered in a dense network of dark-edged spots, often seen hovering low over sand near coral heads while foraging for tiny invertebrates.
reef
Longhorn Sculpin
A large, spiny-headed sculpin common on sandy and rocky seafloors along the northwest Atlantic coast, easily recognized by its oversized head and fan-like pectoral fins.
saltwater
Lane Snapper
A small, silvery-pink schooling snapper marked by faint yellow stripes and a black spot near the tail base, common across shallow Western Atlantic reefs and seagrass.
reef
Harlequin Rasbora
A small, deep-bodied freshwater fish with a coppery-orange body and a distinctive black triangular patch covering the rear half, native to the blackwater streams of Southeast Asia.
freshwater
Grass Carp
A large, torpedo-shaped herbivorous carp native to East Asia, widely introduced worldwide to control aquatic vegetation due to its voracious appetite for water plants.
freshwater
Fugu
The Tiger Puffer, an East Asian coastal pufferfish capable of rapid inflation, with internal organs containing the potent biological toxin tetrodotoxin as a natural defense.
saltwater
Gardner's Killifish
A small, brilliantly colored non-annual killifish from West African forest streams, with males showing an iridescent steel-blue body dotted with red spots and a lyre-shaped tail.
freshwater
Cutthroat Trout
A native western North American trout named for the distinctive red-orange slash marks under its jaw, found in an array of subspecies across cold streams and mountain lakes.
freshwater
Emperor Cichlid
The largest cichlid species in the world, the emperor cichlid grows to nearly a meter long in the deep waters of Lake Tanganyika and is notable for spawning only once before dying shortly after.
freshwater
Chestnut Lamprey
The chestnut lamprey is a freshwater parasitic lamprey of central North America named for its reddish-brown coloration, native to Mississippi and Great Lakes basin rivers and lakes.
freshwater
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