Search Species
Search for fish species by common or scientific name, or use filters to browse by water type, size, temperament, and difficulty.
Found 556 species
Banded-tail glassy perchlet
Ambassis urotaenia
This is one of those see-through glassy perchlets where you can literally watch the organs shimmer when it turns-super cool in the right lighting. In the wild it hangs around river mouths and mangroves and cruises in groups, so it does best when you keep a little gang of them and give them some open swimming room.
Banggai Cardinalfish
Pterapogon kauderni
Banggai cardinals just sort of hover like little underwater satellites, and the bold black bars with those long, polka-dotted fins look unreal under reef lighting. They're super chill most of the time, but once a pair forms you'll see real "fish drama," and the male will even mouthbrood the babies like a champ.
Barbed pipefish
Urocampus nanus
Urocampus nanus (barbed pipefish) occurs in protected inshore and estuarine habitats among seagrass (Zostera) in the Northwest Pacific (southern Japan and adjacent coasts). Like other syngnathids, males brood eggs in a pouch under the tail and produce fully formed young.
Barbedwire-tailed skate
Notoraja martinezi
Notoraja martinezi is a deepwater skate from the eastern Pacific (Costa Rica down to Ecuador) that lives way down on soft bottoms. The tail is the giveaway - it is lined with strong, hooked thorns that really do look like barbed wire. This is absolutely not an aquarium fish; it is a cold, high-pressure deep-sea animal with basically no practical home care info because it is not kept in the hobby.
Barred topminnow
Quintana atrizona
This is a tiny Cuban livebearer that likes to lurk in thick plants and do that classic livebearer "hover and peck" routine all day. The cool part is the subtle black barring and how the fish kind of vanishes into floating plants, then pops right back out when food hits the water.
Barrens topminnow
Fundulus julisia
Fundulus julisia is a rare Tennessee Barrens Plateau topminnow that lives near the surface in springs and spring-fed creeks, often around aquatic vegetation, feeding largely on small aquatic insects. It is federally listed as Endangered (U.S., 2019) and is the focus of captive propagation and reintroduction efforts.
Beach silverside
Atherinella blackburni
This is a little coastal silverside that cruises the shallows in loose groups and flashes like a tiny chrome dart when the light hits it right. In the wild it hangs around beaches, estuaries, and lagoons, picking at small drifting foods in the surf zone. It is cool, but its real "gotcha" is that it is an open-water, salt-tolerant schooling fish that does best in bigger, well-oxygenated setups rather than a typical planted community tank.
Bearded shoveljaw carp
Onychostoma barbatum
Onychostoma barbatum is a freshwater cyprinid from China. Adults inhabit streams with gravel bottoms and reach about 17.6 cm standard length; aquarium care should emphasize high water quality and strong oxygenation typical of stream-dwelling cyprinids.
Ben-Tuvia's goby
Didogobius bentuvii
This is a tiny little Mediterranean goby from the Israeli coast that lives down on the bottom over muddy-sand, and it is likely a burrower. In other words, it is a blink-and-you-miss-it kind of fish - super small, demersal, and more about sneaky bottom-dweller vibes than flashy swimming.
Big-eye anchovy
Anchoa lamprotaenia
Anchoa lamprotaenia is a slim, silvery little anchovy from warm western Atlantic coastal waters, with that clean silver side stripe and big eyes that make it look extra sharp. It is a pelagic, open-water schooling fish that spends its life cruising near the surface and picking zooplankton out of the water column. In practice its not really an aquarium species, because it wants constant swimming room, high oxygen, and a steady supply of tiny foods.
Bigeye brotula
Glyptophidium longipes
Glyptophidium longipes is a deepwater cusk-eel (brotula) from the western Indian Ocean - a slender, eel-ish fish with oversized eyes and long ventral-fin rays. It is a bathyal slope species from a few hundred meters down, so its real-world needs (cold, dark, high-pressure habitat) make it essentially an observation-only "research" animal rather than a practical aquarium fish.
Bigeye clingfish
Kopua nuimata
Kopua nuimata is a tiny deepwater clingfish with big eyes and a neat pink-and-orange banded pattern. It lives way down on reefy slopes (roughly 160-337 m), so its "care" is mostly academic - its natural habitat is cold, dark, high-pressure water that we just do not replicate in home aquariums.