Centropomids

Related Articles: Brackish Water Fishes,

/The Conscientious Brackish Water Aquarist

The Snooks, Humongous and not Perches of the Family Centropomidae

Bob Fenner

Family Centropomidae: Three genera, 22 species. Fresh, Brackish Marine waters of Atlantic, Indian, Pacific Ocean coasts. Perch like appearances, concave snouts.

Centropomus undecimalis (Bloch 1792), the Common Snook. Tropical West Atlantic; North Carolina, Texas, to Rio de Janiero, Brazil. Lives in coastal waters, going into freshwater. To four foot eight inches maximum length. This beauty in a public aquarium in Florida.

Lates calcarifer (Bloch 1790), the Barramundi, Silver "Datnoides". Indo-West Pacific; eastern coast of Arabian Peninsula to China, Southern Japan, New Guinea, Northern Australia. Brackish water as young, switching to all fresh at about a foot in length/time. To two meters long and sixty kg. Important food and game fish. Diadromous; living in freshwater, returning to estuaries to spawn. This five foot one in Phuket's Public Aquarium. Cute, good looking as brackish 3-5 inch aquarium specimens, but grow quickly.

Bibliography/Further Reading:

Balon, E.K. 1975. A golden Lates mariae, an endemic perch of Lake Tanganyika. TFH 12/75.

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