Green with ringed ocelli, and it walks over rubble in daylight rather than hiding.
A small dragonet to about 7 cm, deep green over the body with large dark ocelli each ringed in orange and blue, and a face patterned in green and orange lines. It is a close relative of the mandarinfish and shares the same scaleless, mucus-covered skin, but the pattern is of separate spots rather than the mandarin’s continuous maze of wavy lines, and the ground colour is green rather than blue and orange. Males have a taller first dorsal fin.
Where the mandarinfish comes out only at dusk, this species is active through the day, picking over coral rubble in shallow water for small crustaceans, hopping short distances on its pelvic fins rather than swimming. It stays low and inside the rubble matrix, which is why a diurnal fish is still hard to see. Recorded from about 1 to 15 m. Spawning follows the same pattern as the mandarinfish — a pair rises off the bottom at dusk, releases and separates — but is far less often watched, because nobody sets up a dive for it.
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.
