---
title: Milkfish (Chanos chanos)
scientific_name: Chanos chanos
common_name: Milkfish
taxon: Milkfishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-05T22:43:46.220Z
updated: 2026-08-13T19:23:11.168Z
tags: Milkfish, Chanos chanos, Milkfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/milkfishes/milkfish
---

# Milkfish (*Chanos chanos*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Milkfishes (*Chanidae*)
- **Size:** up to 180 cm
- **Weight:** 14 Kg
- **Depth:** 1-30 m
- **Max age:** 15 yrs
- **Diet:** Herbivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Shallow lagoons, estuaries and reef flats
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Gonochoric
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- bright silver body with an olive back, no marks at all
- large deeply forked tail, dark-edged
- small toothless mouth, and a fatty tissue covering most of the eye
- cruises in a loose group in shallow water, unhurried
- length up to 180 cm

A big, plain, brilliantly silver fish with a huge forked tail and no markings whatsoever, cruising shallow water without any apparent purpose. Up to 180 cm (6 ft), and the largest fish here that eats no animals at all.

The mouth has no teeth. It grazes algal mats, diatoms and the fine organic film off sand and seagrass, filtering the rest with gill rakers, which puts an animal of this size at the bottom of the food chain rather than the top. The eye is covered by a layer of fatty tissue, an adaptation shared with mullets, and its function is still argued over.

Its economic history is stranger than the fish. Milkfish will not spawn readily in captivity, so for centuries farms across Asia were stocked by collecting wild fry - millions of transparent larvae, netted along shorelines by hand, sold by the thousand, and grown in ponds. Hatcheries eventually solved the problem, but for a long time an entire industry depended on people wading in the shallows counting fish smaller than an eyelash.

On this coast it is a lagoon fish, uncommon and easy to overlook: a large silver shape that turns out, on a closer look, to have nothing to catch anything with.

## Also known as

- **English:** milkfish, Moreton Bay Salmon, Giant Herring
- **Arabic:** سالمون موريتون باي, رنجة السلمون, رنجة عملاقة
- **French:** chano, Lubine, Poisson-lait
- **Italian:** Pesce latte, Cefalone
- **German:** Milchfisch
- **Spanish:** sabalote, pez-de-leche
- **Dutch:** bandeng
- **Czech:** chanos stříbřitý
- **Japanese:** サバヒー, Sabahi
- **Chinese:** 虱目魚, 馬友
- **Russian:** Молочная рыба, Ханос
- **DA:** Mælkefisk
- **FA:** Khameh-mahi
- **KO:** 갯농어
- **TEL:** పాలా బోథా, Poomeen
- **TH:** ปลานวลจันทร์ทะเล

## Scientific synonyms

- *Butirinus argenteus* Jerdon, 1849
- *Butirinus maderaspatensis* Jerdon, 1849
- *Channo chanos* (Fabricius, 1775)
- *Chanos arabicus* Lacepède, 1803
- *Chanos chloropterus* Valenciennes, 1847
- *Chanos cyprinella* Valenciennes, 1847
- *Chanos gardineri* Regan, 1902
- *Chanos indicus* (van Hasselt, 1823)
- *Chanos lubina* Valenciennes, 1847
- *Chanos mento* Valenciennes, 1847
- *Chanos mossambicus* (Peters, 1852)
- *Chanos nuchalis* Valenciennes, 1847
- *Chanos orientalis* Valenciennes, 1847
- *Chanos salmoneus* (Forster, 1801)
- *Chanos salmonoides* (Forster, 1801)
- *Cyprinus pala* Cuvier, 1829
- *Cyprinus palah* Cuvier, 1829
- *Cyprinus tolo* Cuvier, 1829
- *Leuciscus palah* (Cuvier, 1829)
- *Leuciscus salmoneus* (Forster, 1801)
- *Leuciscus zeylonicus* Bennett, 1833
- *Lutodeira chanos* (Fabricius, 1775)
- *Lutodeira chloropterus* (Valenciennes, 1847)
- *Lutodeira indica* van Hasselt, 1823
- *Lutodeira mossambica* Peters, 1852

## Range

Comoros, Djibouti, Federal Republic of Somalia, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Red Sea, Republic of Mauritius, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania, Western Indian Ocean

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/milkfishes/milkfish)*
*Updated: August 13, 2026*