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.
Green Chromis
The Green Chromis is a small, shimmering blue-green damselfish that forms large schools hovering above branching coral heads on Indo-Pacific reefs.
reef
French Angelfish
A large Caribbean reef angelfish with a jet-black body edged in bright yellow on each scale, giving adults a shimmering, chain-mail-like appearance.
reef
Gilthead Bream
A deep-bodied Mediterranean and Eastern Atlantic sparid named for the golden band across its forehead. A euryhaline species that moves between coastal reefs and brackish lagoons.
saltwater
Flat Needlefish
A laterally flattened needlefish with a ribbon-like cross-section, patterned with dark blotches along its silvery flanks, found worldwide in warm coastal and offshore surface waters.
saltwater
Golden Trout
One of the most brilliantly colored freshwater fish in North America, native to a small area of high-elevation streams in California's Sierra Nevada, marked with vivid golden-orange flanks and crimson stripes.
freshwater
Gambusia
A small, hardy North American livebearer famous for its voracious appetite for mosquito larvae, widely introduced worldwide for mosquito control with significant ecological consequences.
freshwater
Glass Catfish
A small Southeast Asian catfish with an almost fully transparent body that reveals its skeleton and internal organs.
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
Glowlight Tetra
A slender, translucent tetra marked by a bright iridescent orange-red stripe running the length of its body, giving it a luminous glow effect.
freshwater
Green Jack
The Green Jack is a schooling eastern Pacific jack with a greenish-blue back, silvery sides, and yellowish lower fins, common in coastal surface waters.
pelagic
Flounder
A flatfish with both eyes on its upper side that lies camouflaged against sandy or muddy bottoms, ambushing small fish and invertebrates that pass overhead.
saltwater
Giant Trevally
The largest of the trevallies, a powerful, deep-bodied predator of Indo-Pacific reefs and lagoons known for its steep head profile and ferocious ambush strikes.
reef
Flyingfish
The common name for fish of the family Exocoetidae, known for gliding above the ocean surface on enlarged, wing-like fins; the Flyingfish (*Exocoetus volitans*) represents this widespread tropical group.
pelagic
Gold Dust Molly
A selectively bred molly variety combining a golden-yellow base color with fine black speckling, developed in the aquarium trade from wild Poecilia stock.
freshwater
Four-Eyed Fish
A surface-dwelling brackish-water fish famous for eyes split into upper and lower halves, allowing it to see simultaneously above and below the waterline.
brackish
Grass Rockfish
A stocky, olive-green rockfish adapted to very shallow rocky habitats and tide pools, among the most tolerant rockfish species of low-oxygen, wave-exposed environments.
saltwater
Fourstripe Damselfish
A white damselfish marked with three bold black bars plus a black tail, forming a four-banded pattern as it hovers around branching coral on Indo-Pacific reefs.
reef
Gray Angelfish
A large, plain gray Caribbean and Atlantic angelfish with a pale, pouty mouth and subtly yellow-tinged scale edges, often seen alone or in pairs around reef structure.
reef
Freshwater Archerfish
The largest and most freshwater-tolerant of the archerfish, marked by scattered dark spots rather than bold bars. It uses the same precise water-spitting technique as its relatives to knock insects from overhanging vegetation.
freshwater
Foureye Butterflyfish
A Caribbean butterflyfish with a large false eyespot near the tail and a real eye hidden by a dark bar.
reef
Frilled Shark
An eel-like, primitive deep-sea shark often called a living fossil, with six frilly gill slits and rows of needle-like teeth for catching soft-bodied prey.
deepsea
Garfish
A long, silvery, needle-jawed fish of European coastal waters, instantly recognizable by its bright green backbone and slender, beak-like snout.
pelagic
Goblin Shark
A rare, pink-skinned deep-sea shark with a long, blade-like snout and jaws that shoot forward to snatch prey in an instant.
deepsea
Flame Angelfish
The Flame Angelfish is a small, vivid orange-red dwarf angelfish marked with black vertical bars and blue-tipped fins, commonly seen darting among reef crevices in the Pacific.
reef
Gizzard Shad
A deep-bodied, silvery freshwater fish easily recognized by its blunt, rounded snout and long, whip-like filament trailing from the last dorsal fin ray, common in rivers, lakes, and reservoirs across North America.
freshwater
Frigate Mackerel
A small tuna-like fish with a distinctive dark, wavy tiger-stripe pattern on its upper back, found in warm oceanic waters worldwide.
pelagic
Golden Trevally
A bright golden-yellow jack, often banded as a juvenile, found around coral reefs and lagoons throughout the Indo-Pacific.
reef
Firefish Goby
A slender white-and-orange reef fish with a tall, flag-like first dorsal fin, often seen hovering near its burrow on sandy slopes.
reef
Green Scat
A green-toned color variant of the Spotted Scat, with the same deep, disc-shaped body but a more uniform olive-green wash and lighter spotting. Found in the same brackish estuaries and harbors across the Indo-Pacific.
brackish
French Grunt
The French grunt is a small, abundant reef fish of the Caribbean and western Atlantic, marked by narrow yellow stripes over a silvery-white body and known for forming dense daytime schools.
reef
Graysby
The graysby is a small, reddish-brown reef grouper of the tropical western Atlantic, densely covered in pale spots and marked with a few larger dark blotches along its back.
reef
Garden Eel
Garden Eels are slender, colony-forming eels that live permanently anchored in sandy burrows near reefs, swaying in the current as they catch drifting plankton.
reef
Great Sculpin
One of the largest sculpin species, with a heavily armored, spiny head and mottled brown body, found along rocky and muddy bottoms of the cold North Pacific.
saltwater
Frontosa
A striking striped cichlid from Lake Tanganyika, notable for the bulging cranial hump adult males develop above their eyes.
freshwater
Green Neon Tetra
A Rio Negro blackwater characin closely related to the Neon Tetra, identified by its shimmering blue-green stripe and limited rear-body red coloration.
freshwater
Flame Tetra
A Rio de Janeiro coastal stream characin with a graduated flame-like color pattern from silver at the head to red-orange at the tail.
freshwater
Green Moray Eel
The Green Moray Eel is a large Atlantic reef eel whose apparent green color actually comes from a yellow mucus layer coating its naturally blue-grey skin.
reef
Gafftopsail Catfish
A silvery Atlantic sea catfish named for the tall, sail-like extension of its first dorsal fin ray and long trailing pectoral fin filaments.
saltwater
Green Swordtail
The naturally colored, wild-type form of the swordtail, the green swordtail displays an olive-green body with a red-brown stripe and the species' signature elongated tail extension in males.
freshwater
Football Fish
A round, warty deep-sea anglerfish whose much larger females dangle a bioluminescent lure from a spine above the mouth to draw prey through the permanent darkness of the deep ocean.
deepsea
Gila Trout
The Gila trout is a rare golden-hued native trout restricted to a handful of remote headwater streams in New Mexico and Arizona, and remains one of North America's most range-limited trout species.
freshwater
Foxface Rabbitfish
The Foxface Rabbitfish has a bright yellow body, a distinctive black-and-white striped face, and venomous dorsal spines, and is often seen grazing algae on reef flats in pairs.
reef
Goldfish
A hardy freshwater fish domesticated from the wild Prussian carp, prized worldwide as an ornamental pond and aquarium species in many color forms.
freshwater
Flame Hawkfish
A brilliant red-orange reef fish that perches motionless atop branching coral, darting out to ambush small prey.
reef
Giant Freshwater Stingray
One of the largest freshwater fish on Earth, a massive river-dwelling stingray capable of exceeding 2 meters across and hundreds of kilograms.
freshwater
Gag Grouper
The gag grouper is an elongated, grey-brown grouper of the western Atlantic recognized by its faint worm-like markings and slender build compared to other groupers.
reef
Golden Wonder Killifish
A golden-orange color form of the striped panchax, this hardy topminnow patrols the water's surface hunting insects and small fish in South Asian wetlands.
freshwaterFantail Sole
A right-eyed Pacific flatfish named for its broadly rounded, fan-like tail, common on sandy bottoms from California to Baja California.
saltwater