The common anemonefish of the Great Barrier Reef and the Coral Sea, orange-brown with two white bars, in several host anemones.
To 12 or 13 cm. Adults are orange-brown to dusky brown with two white bars, each edged in black — one behind the eye, often thin or broken, and one below the dorsal fin. The tail and the base of the tail are white. Juveniles are brownish with three stripes and sub-adults are dull yellow with two.
Clark’s anemonefish shares the range and is the main confusion. In this species the white bars are narrower and the dark body shades into the white tail without a break, where Clark’s anemonefish has a sharp clean edge between body and a bright white or yellow tail. The orange-fin anemonefish is darker with a much broader head bar. The orange clownfish has three bars, not two, and is bright orange.
It is a generalist and uses six host anemones: the bubble-tip, the beaded, the leathery, the magnificent, Haddon’s carpet and Mertens’ carpet. It never leaves the anemone, and it lives in a group with one dominant female, a breeding male and non-breeding subordinates; when the female dies the male changes sex. Eggs are laid on cleared rock at the base of the anemone and guarded, and a brooding fish will make short darting charges at a diver. Usually above 25 m, though surveys have found it at 50 to 65 m.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.
