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.
Mummichog
A stout, hardy killifish common in salt marshes and estuaries along the North American Atlantic coast, well known for its extreme tolerance of changing salinity and oxygen levels.
brackish
Murray River Rainbowfish
A slender, schooling rainbowfish native to Australia's Murray-Darling river system, displaying subtle pink-red stripes and yellow-tinted fins along its silvery-blue body.
freshwater
Ling Cod
A large, elongated predator of the North Pacific coast known for its mottled camouflage and cavernous, tooth-filled mouth. Despite the name, it is not a true cod but a member of the greenling family.
saltwater
Longnose Chimaera
A deep-water cartilaginous fish related to sharks, marked by an unmistakably long pointed snout and a slender tapering body cruising continental slopes far below sunlight.
cartilaginous
Ide
A robust, silvery cyprinid of large European rivers and lakes, the ide (commonly bred as the golden 'orfe') forms active surface shoals and is a widely stocked ornamental pond fish worldwide.
freshwaterGuppy
A small livebearing fish native to northeastern South America, famous for the males' vividly colored, ornately shaped tails and its worldwide popularity in the aquarium hobby.
freshwater
Koi
Ornamental color varieties of the Amur carp, selectively bred in Japan for centuries into hundreds of red, white, black, and gold patterns kept in decorative ponds worldwide.
freshwater
Emperor Angelfish
The Emperor Angelfish is a large, boldly striped reef fish with alternating blue and yellow horizontal lines and a dark mask across the eyes, one of the most recognizable angelfish in the Indo-Pacific.
reef
Diamond Killifish
A tiny, unusually deep-bodied killifish from Gulf Coast salt marshes, named for its compressed, diamond-shaped profile. It tolerates wide swings in salinity within tidal creeks and marsh pools.
brackish
Creek Chub
A stout, adaptable minnow common in small North American creeks, the creek chub is a dominant predator in headwater streams, feeding on insects and small fish, and known for building spawning nest mounds.
freshwater
Bull Trout
A large, cold-water char native to the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountains, requiring exceptionally cold, clean streams and listed as threatened across much of its range in the United States.
freshwater
Copperband Butterflyfish
The Copperband Butterflyfish has a silvery-white body banded in copper-orange and a long, slender snout used to probe crevices, along with a black eyespot near the tail that helps confuse predators.
reef
California Sheephead
A large sequential-hermaphrodite wrasse of California and Baja kelp forests, with males showing a striking black-and-red pattern and prominent canine teeth used to crush hard-shelled prey.
reef
Channel Catfish
A widespread North American catfish recognized by its deeply forked tail, scattered dark spots, and long barbels around the mouth. It is the most abundant catfish species in the United States.
freshwater
Blue Whiting
Blue whiting is a slender, silvery-blue deep-water relative of cod that forms enormous schools across the northeastern Atlantic, distinguished by its large eyes and lack of a chin barbel.
pelagic
Bogue
The bogue is a slender, silvery schooling sparid common throughout the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic, feeding on plankton, algae, and small invertebrates in open coastal water.
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.
freshwater
Bagre Catfish
A silvery marine and estuarine catfish of the western Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, recognizable by its elongated sail-like dorsal fin filament and mouth-brooding parenting behavior.
saltwater
Basking Shark
The world's second-largest fish, a massive gray-brown filter feeder recognized by its enormous gaping mouth and huge gill slits, often seen basking at the surface in cool temperate seas.
cartilaginousAustralian Lamprey
The Australian lamprey is a primitive, eel-like jawless fish that spends part of its life as a marine parasite before migrating into coastal rivers of southern Australia and New Zealand to spawn.
brackish
Argentine Pearlfish
A deep-bodied annual killifish from the pampas of Argentina and Uruguay, marked with pearly white spots. It lives in seasonal ponds and survives dry months as diapausing eggs in the mud.
freshwater
Bay Anchovy
One of the most abundant fish in Atlantic and Gulf Coast estuaries, the tiny Bay Anchovy is a key forage species that tolerates a wide range of salinities from open bays to nearly fresh tidal creeks.
brackish
Apache Trout
The Apache trout is a golden-yellow native trout found only in the high-elevation streams of Arizona's White Mountains, and it is the state fish of Arizona following decades of conservation recovery efforts.
freshwater
African Sharptooth Catfish
A hardy, air-breathing catfish native to Africa and the Middle East, capable of surviving in low-oxygen water and even moving briefly over land, now widely farmed and invasive elsewhere.
freshwater