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Related FAQs: Snooks, Nile Perch, the Centropomids

Related Articles: Brackish Water Fishes,

/The Conscientious Brackish Water Aquarist

The Snooks, Humongous and not Perches of the Family Centropomidae

By 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.

Lates niloticus (Linnaeus 1758), Nile Perch. Africa... originally restricted to the "Ethiopian Range", but introduced elsewhere. To 200 cm. and 200 kg... Here at the Denver Aquarium.
http://fishbase.org/Summary/species
Summary.php?ID=347&genusname=
Lates&speciesname=niloticus


Bibliography/Further Reading:

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



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