Jardine basin

The threadfin rainbowfish, Iriatherina werneri, is a small rainbowfish from southern New Guinea, Cape York in Queensland and the Northern Territory. Although widely traded and produced on a commercial scale, it is quite delicate with rather specific care requirements and is not a recommended beginner's fish. Easily outcompeted for food, and with long-finned males that some common species nip, it is best kept alone or with fishes of comparable size and disposition.

The shortfin tandan, Neosilurus brevidorsalis, is a plotosid catfish restricted to the tips of northern Australia and southern Papua New Guinea. In Australia it is recorded only from the Jardine and Jackson river systems on the Cape York Peninsula, and in Papua New Guinea from the Fly River and some other drainages.

The spotted blue-eye, Pseudomugil gertrudae, is a pseudomugilid from northern Australia, Papua New Guinea and the Aru Islands, eastern Indonesia. Wild populations are isolated from one another and differ in colour pattern, body size and fin morphology, but the fish on sale are of a single, commercially produced ornamental strain. Dark spots in the dorsal, anal and caudal fins separate it from other members of the genus except P. paskai and Pseudomugil sp. 'red neon'.

The delicate blue-eye, Pseudomugil tenellus, is a euryhaline blue-eye with a patchy but wide range in coastal northern Australia. Sometimes called the 'Arnhem Land blue-eye', it is most easily identified by the midlateral scale row, a series of pale spots with darker spaces between that become more conspicuous with age. It is particularly common in densely-vegetated swamps, billabongs and slow-moving streams, and also occurs on the Aru Islands and in southern Papua New Guinea.