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.
Spotted Garden Eel
The Spotted Garden Eel lives in dense colonies of speckled, burrow-dwelling eels on sandy reef slopes across the Indo-Pacific, feeding on drifting plankton.
reef
Speckled Moray
A pale, densely speckled moray of Indo-Pacific reef flats, its white to cream body peppered with small black spots that thicken toward the tail.
reef
Queen Triggerfish
The Queen Triggerfish is a strikingly colorful Atlantic reef fish, marked by blue facial lines, a yellow-tinged tail, and elongated dorsal and tail fin filaments.
reef
Blackspotted Puffer
The Blackspotted Puffer, also called the dog-faced puffer, is a small reef pufferfish with a gray, yellow, or blue body scattered with a few large dark spots.
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
Aiptasia-eating Filefish
A small, drab Indo-Pacific filefish prized in reef aquariums for its habit of eating Aiptasia glass anemones, blending into seagrass and algae with mottled camouflage.
reef
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
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
Zebra Turkeyfish
A dwarf lionfish species boldly striped in reddish-brown and white, with broad, fan-like pectoral fins used to corner small prey against reef rubble.
reef
Yellow Boxfish
The Yellow Boxfish is a cube-shaped reef fish, bright yellow with black spots as a juvenile, that swims with slow, hovering movements thanks to its rigid armored body.
reef
Sohal Tang
A powerfully built surgeonfish endemic to the Red Sea and nearby Arabian waters, marked by bold blue and black striping and known for fiercely defending shallow reef flats.
reef
Pennant Coralfish
A black-and-white butterflyfish relative known for its long pennant-like dorsal filament, often mistaken for a juvenile Moorish idol as it drifts in loose reef aggregations.
reef
Porkfish
A bright yellow Caribbean grunt marked by two bold black diagonal stripes across the head, forming large schools that shelter near reef structure by day.
reef
Mutton Snapper
A rosy-pink Western Atlantic reef snapper marked by blue eye-lines and a small black spot below the dorsal fin, with elegantly pointed fin tips.
reef
Midas Blenny
An elongated, brightly colored blenny that ranges from golden-yellow to blue-violet and often mimics the appearance and swimming style of similarly colored basslets. It hovers near reef crevices along drop-offs.
reef
Lionfish
A striking, striped reef predator native to the Indo-Pacific, now a widespread and ecologically disruptive invasive species across the Western Atlantic and Caribbean, easily recognized by its fan-like fins and venomous spines.
reef
Lemon Shark
A stocky, yellow-brown coastal shark named for its sandy coloration, recognized by two nearly equal-sized dorsal fins, common in shallow mangrove and reef habitats of the western Atlantic and eastern Pacific.
cartilaginous
Spotted Scorpionfish
A heavily camouflaged reef fish with mottled brown, red, and white patterning and venomous dorsal spines, blending seamlessly into coral rubble and rocky bottom across the western Atlantic.
reef
Red Grouper
The red grouper is a heavy-bodied, reddish-brown reef fish common on rocky and coral bottoms of the Gulf of Mexico and western Atlantic, known for excavating shallow depressions in sediment.
reef
Longnose Butterflyfish
A bright yellow butterflyfish with a greatly elongated snout used to pluck small invertebrates from reef crevices. It is one of the most widespread and recognizable butterflyfish across the Indo-Pacific.
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
Coral Grouper
The coral grouper is a vivid orange-red reef fish covered in small electric-blue spots, commonly seen darting among coral heads across the Indo-Pacific.
reef
Dragon Wrasse
A reef wrasse whose juveniles mimic drifting algae with wild fin extensions, while adults become stout, green-bodied rock-flippers that hunt buried invertebrates.
reef
Bluestripe Pipefish
The bluestripe pipefish is a tiny reef pipefish with a bright blue lateral stripe running along a tan or orange body, often seen hovering near crevices where it also cleans parasites from larger fish.
reef