Bright red with a dark spot below the second dorsal fin and two white lines through the eye. Under ledges and in holes by day, out over the reef at night.
To about 11 cm. Bright red to dusky red with a big eye and pale bars above and below it, and diagnostically a round black spot beneath the rear of the second dorsal fin plus a broad blackish saddle across the tail base.
That spot-and-saddle combination separates it from the freckled cardinalfish, which has no mid-body spot and is finely freckled instead.
Nought to a hundred and thirty metres on reef, sea walls, pilings and in harbours. Nocturnal, sitting deep in crevices, under overhangs, in wrecks and among pilings by day, often as pairs. It is a mouthbrooder and spawning may run year round; brooding males have been recorded in the Bahamas in June and July.
It is the commonest cardinalfish in the aquarium trade.
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.
