The Paroon Shark (Pangasius sanitwongsei) is a critically endangered freshwater fish in the Pangasiidae family of shark catfish. It is also known as the Giant Pangasius or the Pangasid-Catfish.
The Paroon Shark has a silver, curved underside and a dark-brown back. It has a wide, flat, whiskerless head. Its dorsal, pectoral and pelvic fins are dark-grey. Its dorsal fin is long and trailing.
The Banggai Cardinalfish (Pterapogon kauderni) is an endangered tropical marine (saltwater) fish.
The Banggai Cardinalfish is pale whitish-beige with black vertical bands. It has a black vertical band running through its eyes. It has a long dorsal fin behind a smaller tasseled fin. Its pelvic fins are broad. It has a deeply-forked tail. Along its tail and across its body are a series of small white spots.
The Tinfoil Barb (Barbonymus schwanenfeldii) is a tropical freshwater fish in the Cyprinidae family of cyprinid fish.
The Tinfoil Barb is silver, which looks like tin or aluminium foil. All of its fins are red – a red dorsal fin (back fin) with a black patch on the tip, red pectoral fins, red pelvic fins, red bottom fins, and red caudal fins.
The Rhino Catfish (Pterygoplichthys scrophus) is a sail-finned amoured fish. It is also called the Janitor Fish.
The Rhino Catfish is black to dark-brown with a large sailfin dorsal fin (back fin), a ridged, armoured body, and two horn-like protrusions from its head that looks like the horn of a rhinoceros. The protrusions are actualy nostril flaps so that water doesn’t get up its nose. It has a long sac-like lung to breathe air. Its body is completely covered in small plates that look like armour. It has a suckermouth to suck up algae and filter food from the ocean seabed. It has light-coloured eyes.
The Jewelled Blenny (Salarias fasciatus) is a small tropical marine (saltwater) fish. It looks like a minute eel, but it is a rockskipper. It is often called the Lawnmower Blenny.
The Jewelled Blenny can change colour (camouflage itself) to blend into its surroundings. However, it is usually olve to brown, with dark bars and round or elongated white spots. It has no scales. It has small bright blue spots with dark outlines along the rear of its body. It has large high-set bulbous eyes. It has a continuous dorsal fin (back fin), which has 3-17 spines.
The Pearl Wrasse (Anampses cuvier) is a small tropical saltwater (marine) ray-finned fish. It is in the Labridae family.
The male Pearl Wrasse is blue with red eyes and white spots. The female Pearl Wrasse is reddish-brown with white spots and red eyes. It has red fins. It has a black spot on its tail and often black spots on the fin near the tail (anal fin). Its red dorsal fin (back fin) has 8-21 spines and 6-21 soft rays along most of its back. It has a thick lip, with folds inside the lip.
The Marbled African Lungfish (Protopterus aethiopicus) is one of four species of lungfish found in Africa. It is found in the Nile River and Lake Victoria, and other lakes, swamplands and floodplains. They are sometimes called salamander fish.
The Marbled African Lungfish is a dark-coloured or grey, long, eel-like fish with spaghetti-like pectoral and pelvic fins. It has a mottled or spotted pattern, and small blue eyes.
It has soft scales and a paddle-like tail. They can swim like eels or crawl along the bottom of the river in shallow freshwater with their little leg-like structures.
One of the most important fins on a fish is the tail fin, which is called the caudal fin.
Caudal fins – or fish tails – can be many different shapes. The main shapes are rounded, square, forked and lunate.
Fins on fish help them swim.
Fins usually have bones and skin like a webbed appendage, or like a paper fan that can open and close.
Finlets are small fins. Finlets do not retract (close).
Not all fish have finlets.
Continue reading “What is the difference between a finlet and a fin?”