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.
Butterfly Ray
A ray with an exceptionally wide, flattened disc and short tail, resembling a butterfly in outline as it glides low over sandy coastal seabeds.
cartilaginous
Buenos Aires Tetra
A hardy, cold-tolerant characin from the Parana-La Plata basin, prized in aquariums for its active schooling behavior and subtropical resilience.
freshwater
Bull Rout
Known as the shorthorn sculpin elsewhere, the Bull Rout is a camouflaged, spiny-headed fish common in cold North Atlantic tide pools and rocky shores.
saltwater
Comet Grouper
A pale grayish-brown Indo-Pacific grouper marked with elongated, comet-shaped pale streaks and spots, along with faint dark bands radiating from the eye.
reef
Crevalle Jack
A powerfully built, silvery jack with a steep forehead and a black spot on its gill cover, common along coastal and estuarine waters of the Atlantic.
pelagic
Copper Rockfish
A coppery-brown rockfish with a pale pink-white band along the back half of its body, commonly found near rocky structure and eelgrass beds close to shore.
saltwater
Chum Salmon
A large, widely distributed Pacific salmon known for the bold calico-patterned stripes and blotches that spawning adults develop along their flanks.
freshwater
Bluespine Unicornfish
A large Indo-Pacific tang with a bony forehead horn and paired fixed blue-white spines at the tail base, browsing brown macroalgae on coral reefs and reef flats.
reef
Blue-spotted Stingray
A small, brilliantly patterned stingray common on Indo-Pacific coral reefs, instantly recognizable by its electric-blue spots and blue-striped tail.
reef
Bluegill
A common North American sunfish recognized by its deep, rounded body and the dark blotch on its gill cover, widely found in lakes and ponds and popular with anglers.
freshwater
Bonito
A fast, streamlined relative of the tunas and mackerels, marked by bold dark diagonal stripes across its upper back, found in schools across temperate and warm seas.
pelagic
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 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
Blackfin Clownfish
An orange anemonefish with a single white head bar and distinctive black-edged pelvic and anal fins, endemic to reefs around the Maldives and Sri Lanka.
reef
Bastard Halibut
An alternate name for the olive flounder, a large East Asian coastal flatfish with a muscular olive-brown mottled body, big toothy mouth, and left-sided eyes.
saltwater
Azure Damselfish
A small, vividly blue damselfish common on Indo-Pacific reef flats and lagoons, easily spotted flitting among coral rubble in loose groups.
reef
Barramundi Cod
The Australian common name for the panther grouper, a pale gray, black-spotted reef grouper instantly recognizable by its small head and steeply humped forehead.
reef
Barbour's Seahorse
A small, spiny-crowned seahorse native to the coral reefs and seagrass beds of the western Pacific, distinguished by fine dark banding along its snout.
reef
Barred Mudskipper
An amphibious mangrove goby with bulging eyes and muscular fins that lets it crawl and hop across exposed mud at low tide throughout the Indo-Pacific.
brackish
Bicolor Anthias
A small Indo-Pacific reef fish sharply divided in color, with a violet-purple front half and a golden-yellow rear half, forming loose groups above reef structure.
reef
Amberjack
A powerful, deep-bodied jack that patrols reefs and wrecks worldwide in warm seas, known for its stubborn fighting strength and amber-tinted flanks.
reef
Uaru
A large, deep-bodied Amazonian cichlid known for a dramatic color change with age, from a striped juvenile pattern to a mottled brown adult, and for a rare parenting behavior in which parents feed their fry a body-slime secretion.
freshwater
Starry Flounder
The starry flounder is a distinctive North Pacific flatfish recognized by alternating orange and black bands across its fins and rough, star-shaped scales, and notable for tolerating a wide range of salinities.
brackish
Sculpin
A broad-headed, bottom-dwelling fish of the family Cottidae, represented here by the widespread Pacific Staghorn Sculpin, known for its large fan-like pectoral fins and mottled camouflage on sandy and muddy bottoms.
saltwater