Poptella is a genus of small, deep-bodied tetras in the characin family, distributed widely across South America's Amazon, Orinoco, and Paraná-Paraguay drainages. Its species share a laterally compressed, almost disc-shaped silvery body, a miniature echo of the unrelated silver dollars, rather than the slimmer torpedo shape of many other tetras, and most stay modest in size, though the largest atlas species reaches just over 4 in. They school over slow to moderate-flow forest streams and floodplain habitats.
Poptella species see only occasional aquarium trade, usually turning up as an incidental part of wild tetra shipments rather than a deliberately targeted import, and detailed care information for most of the genus is sparse. The compressed tetra (Poptella compressa) and the longfin poptella (P. longipinnis) are the most likely to appear with names attached. Most of the atlas's eight species are Not Evaluated by the IUCN, reflecting how little formal conservation attention this genus has received rather than any documented risk.