Switches between silver and deep red within seconds; a night feeder resting by day.
To about 40 cm, with a very large eye, an upturned mouth and a tail that ranges from truncate in juveniles to strongly crescent-shaped in adults. Colour switches between plain silver-pink, deep red, and red with silver blotches, and an individual can run through all three in under a minute. The similar Priacanthus blochii has a squarer tail and a deeper body.
It shelters under overhangs, inside wrecks and around large coral heads through the day, often in loose groups, and disperses into open water at night to take zooplankton and small fish. The large eye is the visible adaptation to that. Resting fish hold position well and are easily approached; the difficulty is exposure, since a red fish in a dark overhang gives a camera very little to work with. Recorded from about 5 to 50 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.