Search Species
Search for fish species by common or scientific name, or use filters to browse by water type, size, temperament, and difficulty.
Found 528 species
Marlin-spike grenadier
Nezumia bairdii
Marlin-spike grenadier is a deep-sea rat-tail with a long whip tail and big eyes, cruising over soft bottoms on the Atlantic slope. You see it from Newfoundland down to Florida in near-freezing water hundreds of meters down, picking off krill, amphipods, and worms. Super cool to spot on ROV dives, but not a fish for home aquariums.
Marquesas dwarf flounder
Engyprosopon marquisense
This is a tiny deepwater lefteye flounder from the Marquesas Islands - one of those little sand-hugging ambush fish that looks like a leaf until it moves. Super cool biologically, but honestly not a realistic home-aquarium fish since it comes from 108-408 m depths and there is basically no established hobby care info for the species.
Marshall's grenadier
Coryphaenoides marshalli
This is a deep-sea grenadier (rattail) from the Gulf of Guinea - think big head, huge eyes for the dark, and that classic long tapering tail. It lives way down on the slope, so it's not an aquarium fish in any realistic sense, but it's a really neat example of how fish are built for cold, high-pressure life.
Masked greenling
Hexagrammos octogrammus
Masked greenling is a cold-water North Pacific greenling that hangs around shallow rocky areas and kelp, cruising the bottom and picking off crustaceans. One of the coolest quirks is the family trick of eye/cornea color shifting in different light, which is just wild to see in person. This is not a typical home-aquarium fish - it gets fairly big and wants chilly, super-oxygenated marine water.
McCosker's coralbrotula
Ogilbia mccoskeri
This is a tiny, super-secretive little reef brotula from the SW Caribbean that spends its life tucked into coral rubble and crevices. It is a bottom-hugging carnivore that picks off small mobile crustaceans, and you will mostly see it at dusk or when food hits the water. Cool fish, but it is absolutely not a typical aquarium species, so most "care" info out there is guesswork or confused with McCosker's flasher wrasse (totally different fish).
Mekran ponyfish
Deveximentum mekranense
This is a small ponyfish from the Gulf of Oman off Iran, and like other ponyfishes its whole vibe is being a little bottom-hugging, silvery coastal fish. It is a pretty recent species description (2021), and its natural range is very localized, so you are not going to see it come through the aquarium trade in any normal way. If you ever did encounter one, you would treat it like a delicate wild marine schooling fish rather than a typical hardy "saltwater beginner" fish.
Memorable rearspined fin prickleback
Kasatkia memorabilis
Kasatkia memorabilis is a tiny, eel-shaped marine prickleback from the Sea of Japan area that spends its life down on the bottom in nearshore water. Its whole vibe is "hide in cracks and hug the rocks," so if you ever did keep one, you would treat it more like a coldwater tidepool fish than a tropical reef fish.
Mexican stargazer
Dactyloscopus metoecus
This is a teeny sand-stargazer that spends its time buried with just the eyes poking out, waiting to ambush tiny prey. Super cool little "sand-periscope" behavior, but its whole lifestyle is basically built around being in clean marine sand, so it is not a typical aquarium fish at all.
Midas blenny
Ecsenius midas
Midas blennies are those weirdly "blenny-but-also-open-water" fish that zip around the tank like a tiny golden torpedo, then duck into a hole like nothing happened. They'll even color-shift and loosely school with anthias in the wild, which is honestly one of the coolest behaviors you'll see in a reef fish.
Miracle triplefin
Enneapterygius mirabilis
This is a tiny reef perch that hops around the rockwork and flashes big pectoral fins and a tall first dorsal when it is fired up. It sticks to outer reef slopes in the Southwest Pacific and tops out around 3 cm, so think micro-reef showpiece rather than community fish. Give it mature live rock full of pods and it becomes a fun little hunter to watch.
Misol snake eel
Yirrkala misolensis
Misol snake eel is a sand-burrowing snake eel from the western Pacific that spends most of the day hidden with just its head poking out. In a tank it needs a deep, fine sand bed and a very tight lid, and it will eat small fish and shrimp. It reaches around 20 inches, so plan on a big, well-established marine setup and patient, meaty feeding.
Moluccas snake eel
Yirrkala moluccensis
Yirrkala moluccensis is a tropical snake eel (Ophichthidae) from Indonesia in the western central Pacific. Like most of its relatives its whole vibe is hiding and burrowing, so it is way more of a secretive, sand-loving predator than a "swimming around for display" fish.