Search Species
Search for fish species by common or scientific name, or use filters to browse by water type, size, temperament, and difficulty.
Found 235 species
Kobe flounder
Crossorhombus kobensis
This is a tiny little lefteye flounder that lives out on deeper sandy or shelly bottoms, and it has that classic flatfish vibe where it just vanishes into the substrate. One really cool quirk: males can show a dark-blue stain/pattern on the blind side, and the pectoral fin can be drawn out into a long filament. Its a true marine, demersal fish - not really an aquarium-trade species, more of a neat oddball you read about than one you run into for sale.
Kuiter's deepsea clingfish
Kopua kuiteri
Kopua kuiteri is a tiny deepwater clingfish from southern Australia that lives way down on the seafloor, not in the usual home-aquarium world. It is the kind of fish that sticks to hard surfaces with a suction disc and is basically a cool biology oddball rather than something you will realistically keep at home.
Kulbicki's pipefish
Festucalex kulbickii
This is a tiny reef pipefish from the western-central Pacific that hangs around coastal reefs and blends in with bands and ridges like a little living piece of reef debris. Like other syngnathids, the male broods the eggs in a pouch, which is honestly one of the coolest fish-family flexes in the hobby. It is not a commonly kept aquarium fish, and there are basically no solid reports of long-term captive success for this exact species, so I would treat it as a specialist-only pipefish.
Lanceolate shrimpgoby
Tomiyamichthys lanceolatus
This is a little sand-bottom shrimp goby from sheltered lagoons and bays in the western Pacific. It hangs close to its burrow on fine sand or mud and does the classic goby thing of hovering and darting back to cover when spooked. The lance-shaped tail and the bold side blotches make it a really neat, understated fish if you are into sandbed micro-predators.
Large-eye bigscale
Poromitra megalops
Tiny deep-sea ridgehead from the Atlantic with huge eyes, living in cold, dark water hundreds of meters down. It tops out around two-and-a-half inches and hangs in the mesopelagic-bathypelagic zone, which is awesome to read about but not something you can realistically keep at home.
Leaf-nose legskate
Springeria folirostris
This is a deepwater skate from the Gulf of Mexico with a really funky leaf-like snout extension and those "leg-like" pelvic fins skates are famous for. It lives way down on soft mud/sand bottoms, so its whole vibe is slow, bottom-oriented, and built for cruising the seabed rather than darting around the water column.
Lombok viviparous brotula
Paradiancistrus lombokensis
This is a tiny, super-cryptic marine brotula from around Lombok, Indonesia - the kind of fish that lives tucked deep in reef cracks where you basically never see it. The really neat part is its group (viviparous brotulas) gives live birth, so its biology is way cooler than its shy little "hide in the rocks" lifestyle suggests.
Long tail pipefish
Festucalex prolixus
This is a tiny little marine pipefish from the Western Central Pacific, and it tops out around 3.6 cm standard length. What's wild is that most of what we know comes from planktonic specimens collected in the upper water column, with adults expected deeper than about 40 m - so it is not really an aquarium species you will run into.
Longhead grenadier
Coelorinchus longicephalus
This is a deep-sea rattail (grenadier) from the Northwest Pacific that lives way down on the slope, not something that can be kept in a normal aquarium. It gets a long, tapering body with that classic whiptail look, and it is built for cold, high-pressure water and cruising just off the bottom hunting small prey.
Longnose eagle ray
Myliobatis longirostris
This is a snouted eagle ray from the eastern Pacific (Gulf of California down to northern Peru) that cruises sandy coastal areas and digs out crunchy stuff like clams and crabs. Cool fish, but in real life its a big, roaming ray - not something that belongs in normal home aquariums unless youre talking a true public-aquarium-scale setup.
Longray fangjaw
Zaphotias pedaliotus
This is a tiny deep-sea bristlemouth that lives way down in the midwater-dark and comes up and down the water column on a day-night cycle. Its little light organs (photophores) and even a slight nightly color shift are part of the whole "life in the deep" vibe - super cool, but absolutely not a home-aquarium fish.
Longsnout armored searobin
Paraheminodus longirostralis
This is a deepwater armored searobin - basically a little walking tank of a fish with bony plates and feeler-like rays it uses to hunt along the bottom. Its claim to fame is the extra-long snout projections, and it lives way down on the slope, not in the usual home-aquarium zone. Realistically, this is a research-trawl kind of species rather than something you keep at home.