Aquarist Atlas
Oddballs & Brackish · waters

The waters behind the fish

These fish come from very different water: a tannin-stained forest stream in the Amazon, a tidal creek in a mangrove, a floodplain pool in Bangladesh, a coastal swamp in West Africa. Knowing which system a species comes from, how warm it runs, how salty it is and how it is buffered, is the foundation of keeping it well. Here are the water systems that shaped 58 of the 59 species in this atlas.

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North America

1 species

The Atlantic coastal plain of the United States

The blackbanded sunfish (Enneacanthus) lives in the soft, acidic, often tannin-stained waters of the Atlantic coastal plain: slow streams, swamps and ponds with dense vegetation. It is a temperate species, not a tropical one.

Australia & New Guinea

11 species

Northern Australia, New Guinea and nearby islands

The rivers, billabongs and coastal streams of northern Australia and New Guinea hold the mouth-almighty (Glossamia), grunters (Hephaestus) and archerfish that reach this region. Many of these waters are seasonal, running low and warm in the dry season and flooding in the wet.

African rivers

6 species

West and Central Africa, and the African lungfish rivers

West and Central Africa supply the leaf fish Polycentropsis, the kneriids, Phractolaemus and the lungfish (Protopterus), along with some of the African freshwater pipefish. These fish live in coastal rivers, swamps and floodplains where water can be warm, soft and low in oxygen, and where some species breathe air.

South American rivers

1 species

The Amazon, Orinoco and Guianas

The South American leaf fish Monocirrhus lives in the slow, tannin-stained, often acidic waters of the Amazon and Guianas basins, among leaf litter and roots where its dead-leaf shape works as camouflage.

Mangroves, estuaries and tidal rivers

6 species

Indo-Pacific coasts

Where rivers meet the sea, the water shifts between fresh and salty with the tide. Archerfish, scats, monos, threadfins and many pipefish live in these mangroves, estuaries and tidal rivers, and several move between fresh, brackish and marine water through their lives. Their salinity needs can change as they grow, so the collection site and the water a fish was kept in matter.

South & Southeast Asian rivers and floodplains

33 species

India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, the Mekong basin and the Sunda islands

The streams, pools, floodplains and slow rivers of South and Southeast Asia are home to the badids, the glassfish, the Asian leaf fish (Nandus), Indostomus and freshwater tigerfish, along with other fish in this section. Water ranges from clear, fast hill streams to warm, plant-choked floodplain pools, and many of these fish are small and easily overlooked in surveys.

Other waters

1 species

Elsewhere or unspecified

Fish whose recorded range falls outside, or spans, the named systems above. Many of these fish are small or secretive, and the ranges of the more recently described species are still being worked out.

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