Some of the eggs drift with the water, some sink to the bottom or cling to water plants and rocks, and only when the eggs hatch do they themselves begin to find a suitable environment to survive.
Some of the growing fish are only a centimeter long (gobies), while others are as large as ten meters. There are also many color variations. Usually, fish in the tropics have brighter body colors, while frigid fish are duller. In addition, some of the fish that grow in the deep sea have tusks, large mouths, or other appendages that allow them to attack their enemies and protect themselves.
Fish can be divided into cartilaginous fish and bony fish according to different bones; according to the different environments of survival, they can be divided into freshwater fish and saltwater fish. Most of them use gills to breathe, use fins to level the body, and some fins are even long with hard spines, which can be used as defense weapons. Fish scales have the function of protecting the skin of fish, and the scale pattern on the scales is the same as the annual rings of trees, which can identify the age of the fish. Most fish have an air-filled swim bladder in their bodies, which can adjust the water pressure according to the depth of the water, so they feel comfortable even when they are still in the water. Fish that don't have swim bladders will sink to the bottom of the ocean if they stop swimming.
The potbelly fish
The potbelly fish is like its word, its belly is convex and concave, because of its small size, it is also called "willow fish", plus it likes to eat mosquito larvae tsetse, it is also called "mosquito-eating fish".
Native to Central and North America and the West Indies, and later introduced to Taiwan by the Japanese, the potbellied fish is an easy fish to hook, and can also be used as live bait to catch other big fish.
The potbellied fish belongs to the medaka family and is ovoviviparous. They are often found in streams and ditches because they are very fertile. They often swim in groups, and a female is often followed by several males, which is like a "polygamy" system!
Wu Guo Fish
Around the year 35 of the Republic of China (R.O.C.), Mr. Wu Zhenhui and Mr. Guo Qizhang introduced a fish from the South China Sea. In honor of them, people called that fish "Wu Guo Fish", and "Vietnamese Fish" and "Southern Ocean Carp" were its aliases.
Native to the fresh waters of Africa, the Wu Kwok Fish is a small fish with dark gray stripes. The Wu Kwok Fish that we see nowadays has been improved by breeding, and it is easy to breed, and it can be fed with all kinds of animal and plant bait. Moreover, it has a strong fertility, grows fast, and can resist harsh environments. It has long been a commonly consumed freshwater fish, and because of its tasty and plump meat, it is also called the "Fukushou Fish".
The Wu Kwok Fish belongs to the family Cichlidae of the order Perciformes, and is one of the few fish that protects its eggs. The male fish has the habit of occupying the territory, and when breeding, he will use his mouth and tail to dig a hole under the water to lure the female fish to the hole to spawn, while he is guarding it, and when the eggs are fertilized, the female or male fish will hold the fertilized eggs in their mouths, and will not spit them out until the eggs have hatched. The newly hatched fish will quickly run back into the mouth of the parent fish when they are frightened or hostile, and the parent fish will carry them to safety.
Owu fish
If, for example, you pass by a store that sells northern and southern goods, you might want to stop and see if the store sells a piece, oval and flat in shape, of oyster roe. The roe is the ovary of a female fish, which is processed in the sun to become a flavorful and nourishing food. However, the price is not cheap!
Taiwan's main island production of fish, every winter, schools of fish will swim with the cold water group through the Taiwan Strait, to Tainan to Hengchun area of the sea spawning. After the eggs hatch into small fish, they swim back to the coastal areas of the province, with the largest number of fish in the estuaries at the junction of salt and fresh water.
The mullet belongs to the family Mulletidae of the order Perciformes, and is found in temperate and tropical waters all over the world. The back is bluish gray and the belly silvery white. The eyes have thick, fatty lids. The body is long and round, the big one is eighty centimeters, and the small one is about thirty to fifty centimeters. The meat is tasty, so the province now has a well-developed culture business for the osprey, which has already added an income for fishermen.
Fighting Fish
Aquariums often display a very brightly colored, but aggressive fish in their tanks. The breeding process of the fighting fish is very special and interesting. At the beginning of spring and summer, a mature male will turn red all over his body, and then pick a place in the still water surrounded by a lot of water plants and floating weeds, where he will spit out a lot of bubbles and form a nest. At the same time, he attracts and chases the females and chases away other unwanted guests. After the nesting is completed, the female and male fighting fish will embrace each other and twist their bodies as if they are dancing together. After the female lays her eggs, the male will spit the fertilized eggs into the bubble nest so that the eggs will stick to the bubbles. At this point, the male will drive the female away and take care of the next generation until the young are fully grown, and then he will step down from his father's duties.
Fighting fish belong to the family of fighting fish, produced in the tropics or subtropics, originating in Thailand, South China and Taiwan also have fighting fish. They feed on small aquatic organisms such as tsetse and daphnia. The general life span is not more than two years. In the gill cavities there is a special organ called the maze, which can be used to exchange oxygen and exhaust gases in the body. When fighting fish fight, their bodies become brightly colored, their fins are fully extended, their gill covers expand, they bite each other's fins and bodies, and they can fight for hours without sleep.
River jacks
"Eat river jacks with your life" is a Chinese proverb, which indicates that river jacks are highly poisonous and can kill you, but their meat is so delicious that some people are willing to risk their lives to have a taste of it.
However, not all parts of the quail are poisonous; it is mostly the ovaries, skin, or liver that are poisonous, so the technique of removing them is quite important. The Japanese also regard the river jack as a precious delicacy, and it is said that the cook has to taste the dish himself before serving it to show that he is responsible for it!
The river jack is commonly known as the return fish, belonging to the order of jacks, oviparous. Produced in tropical or subtropical oceans, few days live in freshwater. To feed on small organisms, they have a complex and peculiar form, some have a hard shell, and some are covered with small needle spines. River jacks in danger, will immediately swallow a large amount of seawater or large mouth inhalation of air, the belly up as a ball. If it is a spiny river dolphin, the spines on its body will stand up one by one, turning into a big round ball of spines, so as to scare away the enemy. Because of their interesting appearance, they are often kept for viewing.
Goldfish
Have you ever fished for goldfish in a night market pond? Or have you ever seen the many different kinds of goldfish in an aquarium? More than a thousand years ago, the Chinese began to breed goldfish, calling them "firefish" or "red-scaled fish" because they were mostly red or had red markings. It was not until the Ming Dynasty, when they were introduced to Europe and Japan, that the culture of keeping goldfish became more and more popular.
Goldfish are small in size, only a few inches long, but they are not short-lived, and some can live for more than ten years.
The eggs laid by goldfish are sticky and cling to water plants or rocks, and usually hatch faster when the water is warmer. However, the hatchlings are often infected with bacteria or eaten by other organisms, resulting in a mortality rate of more than 70 percent.
The goldfish is a variant of the crucian carp, which belongs to the family Carpidae, just like the crucian carp, because of the special attention paid to the selection of the species. Because the selection process pays special attention to the size of the fish, the size of the fins, and the prominence of the eyes, many varieties of goldfish with distinctive features have been cultivated, such as the "Egg Fish", which is round and fat and does not have a dorsal fin, the "Bubble Eyes", which has prominent eyes that look like blisters, and the "Lion Head", which has a head that looks like a lion's head, and so on.
Grass carp
Young grass carp mostly eat water fleas, young grass, and duckweed, and when they reach about 15 centimeters in length, they will eat all kinds of grasses, such as pasture grass and water grass. They are named "grass" fish because they grow in lakes and rivers where there is a lot of water and grass, and because they can remove too much water and grass.
Grass carp is a good material for cooking, legend has it that in the Southern Song Dynasty, there was a Sister-in-law Song Wu, who was very good at cooking fish, and the grass carp cooked by her was so delicious that it was known as "West Lake Vinegared Fish", also known as "Sister-in-law Song's Fish". At that time, the big restaurants along the West Lake also supplied freshly cooked grass carp, and customers only had to wait for half an hour to enjoy a delicious and fresh meal. Nowadays, a lot of fish heads in casseroles are made with grass carp as the main ingredient.
Grass carp is a warm-water fish of the carp family, native to mainland China, and is the main fish farmed in the Yangtze River basin. Its body is yellowish with a hint of grass green, its belly is white, its scales are large and round with black edges, and its fins, except for the ventral fin, are greenish gray. When mature, some grass carp can grow to 70 or 80 centimeters and weigh several kilograms, making it a giant among freshwater fish.
Carp
You've heard of "Carp leaping over the Dragon Gate"! Like many other fish, carp love to jump into the water, and some people believe that because of their particularly lively personality, carp often play in the water and jump into the water, thus giving rise to the spectacle of leaping the Dragon Gate.
Carp love to move around in warm waters and are a common fish in mainland China. Small carp teach to eat zooplankton on the surface of the water, and when they grow up, they dive into deeper water to swim. In addition to eating insects, tadpoles, and shrimp under the water, they sometimes use their mouths to dig through the mud under the water to find some decaying plant debris to eat.
The carp belongs to the carp family, and the lower common carp has a rounded, fusiform belly, the upper part is dark gray, the belly is white, with a bit of golden yellow on both sides, hence the name "Golden Carp"; it is used to identify the taste of food.
However, there are many varieties of carp nowadays, such as 'koi', which is brightly colored and designed for ornamental purposes, 'koi', which is a fatty fish, and 'koi', which has rare scales, as well as 'koi' and 'koi', which are varieties of carp that have been selected and mated.
Carp
The crucian carp, also known as the "carp" or "perch," is a common fish in the warm waters of Asia and Europe. It resembles the carp, but is smaller, has no whiskers around its mouth, and is hardier than the carp. However, nowadays improved varieties of carp are instead more afraid of the cold, and can barely move around in cold winters.
Usually, crucian carp like to live in the muddy bottom because it is rich in algae and safer. However, some modified crucian carp love clear water flow, if the water flow is polluted, they are less likely to survive.
The crucian carp belongs to the carp family and is sensitive by nature because it has a well-developed central nervous system, so it can quickly sense a slight change in sound in the water. In addition, it also has a simple learning ability, for example, as long as it has been hooked by a fishhook, and then when it encounters a fishhook again, it will immediately turn its head and swim away, and will not be hooked again.
Piranha
In the Amazon River in South America, there is a particularly ferocious fish, once a terrestrial animal falls into the water, they are mercilessly biting, and before long, only a pile of bones remain. You must have guessed that it was a piranha.
Piranhas are ten to sixty centimeters long and have large, protruding jaws with jagged, sharp teeth. They are usually found in groups, feeding on small fish, and if a terrestrial animal falls into the water, their keen sense of smell will immediately surround them, and their sharp teeth, coupled with strong jaw muscles, can tear the animal's flesh in just a few minutes, and eat it to the bone. Sometimes piranhas even kill each other for food! The ferocious and greedy look is disgusting and frightening.
Piranhas belong to the Carangidae family, and are found in the forested rivers of Central and South America. There are about eighteen species of piranhas, but only four of them are harmful to humans and animals. Piranhas reproduce during the rainy season, laying their eggs on the surface of water plants. The males often wait by the water plants to protect the eggs and the young, and the hatchlings rely on the yolk to sustain their lives until they run out of yolk, when they leave the water plants and are free to move around.
Seahorses
There are a number of medicinal herbs available in Chinese herbal stores that are made from dried animals, and seahorses are one of them. It has an interesting and easily recognizable look: a head like a pony, a tail like an elephant trunk, and a tubular mouth.
The baby seahorse is incubated by the male seahorse. The male seahorse has a skin pouch on his abdomen, and the female lays her eggs in this pouch. After the eggs are fertilized, the baby seahorses hatch in about forty to fifty days. Usually, the baby seahorses are less than two centimeters. When they mature and leave the father seahorse's "nursery bag," they must live on their own.
Seahorses belong to the family Hippocampidae and are found in shallow tropical and subtropical seas, where there is a lot of seaweed. It is covered with bony scales and is about 15 centimeters long. When swimming, the body stands upright and paddles forward with the dorsal fin, which is not fast. When resting, it wraps its tail around seaweed. When it encounters small shrimps and other crustaceans, it swallows them whole, as seahorses have no teeth to bite or chew.
Tropical fish
Tropical fish are those that grow in tropical or subtropical waters, oviparous and ovoviviparous, because they survive in different environments, and can be divided into two categories: freshwater and seawater.
Freshwater tropical fish are mostly small, brightly colored, and are commonly kept at home. Examples include the aggressive Siamese fighting fish and the birdfish, which has a beautiful fan-shaped tail fin.
Most saltwater tropical fish like to swim in the gaps of coral reefs, so they are also known as "reef fish", such as the clownfish, which lives with anemones***, and the devil's catfish, which has long fins all over its body and looks like it has a cloak, are some of them.
Some tropical fish, although they do not have a bright appearance, but they are very distinctive, such as the water gunfish often stop at the edge of the water plants, and when they see an insect, they can spray a thin column of water from their mouths, and shoot the insect down to eat it; the glass catfish, whose body is like glass, is completely transparent, and you can clearly see the skeleton and internal organs in the body.
Salmon
Salmon is a saltwater fish, the colder it is, the bigger it grows, and someone once caught a king salmon weighing forty-five kilograms in frigid Alaska.
Salmon have migratory characteristics, every spawning season, no matter how far the journey, how many waterfalls and rapids on the way, they will desperately swim back to the river where they were born to reproduce the next generation, so salmon fishing is seasonal.
Salmon belong to the Salmonidae family, and there is a difference between the Pacific salmon and the Atlantic salmon because of the different regions where they are distributed. After migrating into rivers, Atlantic salmon begin to eat irregularly, relying only on the fat stored in their bodies to survive. As a result, they are very thin when they swim to their birthplace, and after spawning and reproducing, they are even weaker, and this is especially true of the males. They follow the waves, and if they are lucky enough to return to the sea without getting sick along the way, they will soon regain their strength and return to the river to reproduce again.
Pacific salmon don't eat before they enter the river, and although they also survive on body fat, by the time they reach their birthplace, they are so thin that they are reduced to a skeleton and reproductive nest, and so after spawning, they almost all die.
Sharks
Have you ever eaten cod liver oil? Cod liver oil is refined from the liver of sharks, which is rich in vitamin A and protects vision. In addition, shark fins can be made into shark fins, which is a delicacy for banquets. Therefore, shark is a highly edible fish for human beings.
Sharks have been dominant in the sea for 300 million years, and have no real formidable enemy except humans. Its sharp teeth are similar to steel, its outer skin is thick and strong, and with its streamlined body, it has no rivals for speed.
Sharks belong to the order Chondrichthyes, like to live in the tropical and warm temperate oceans. It has a keen sense of smell, which is used to search for food and courtship. Reproduction is oviparous and ovoviviparous, with ovoviviparity being the most common. The eggs of sharks are the largest of all fish, reaching over twenty centimeters in length. There are more than two hundred species of sharks, some of which are ferocious and attack people swimming, such as tiger sharks and great white sharks, while others are tame, such as elephant sharks and whale sharks, among which whale sharks are not only the largest sharks, but also the largest fish in the world, with a body length of twelve meters and weighing more than ten thousand kilograms. Of course, there are also very small sharks, such as the sharks of the genus Sperm Shark, which are only fifteen to twenty centimeters long.
The eel
In the fish market, you can see a kind of slippery, slender, snake-like fish, and the dorsal fin is directly connected to the caudal fin, which is the eel.
The eel's body will secrete a lot of mucus, plus its scales are soft, hidden under the skin, so it is very smooth to the touch; its vertebrae up to about two hundred, and some even up to six hundred, the slender body swing up very flexible. The eel is a bony fish, oviparous. They live in fresh water and hide in rocks or holes during the day, only coming out at night to feed on small animals. Between October and January each year, mature eels swim down rivers to the deep sea to lay their eggs. The eggs hatch into young eels, which are flat and transparent, like a willow leaf. As they drift along with the sea, their bodies gradually become rounded, and it takes about a year for them to take on the appearance of an eel, and only then do they swim out of the sea into the estuary. Eels are tasty and inexpensive, and can be made into canned food, dried fish, or fish balls. They are also considered nourishing because of their high fat content. At present, Taiwan's eel farming business is very developed.