Deep orange-brown with two white bars, and the only anemonefish in the Red Sea, which makes it the easy one to name there.
To about 14 cm, deep orange-brown darkening towards the rear, with two white bars — one behind the head and one on the body — and a paler tail. It is a Red Sea and Gulf of Aden species and it is the only anemonefish in that sea, which makes identification straightforward there and impossible to transfer anywhere else.
It uses the bubble-tip anemone and a few other hosts, and as in the rest of the group the largest fish in an anemone is female, the second largest is the breeding male, and the rest are smaller non-breeders. If the female dies the male changes sex and the next in line moves up. It is aggressive at the anemone and will charge a diver and a camera port, which is behaviour rather than threat, and it makes the fish easier to photograph than most: it comes to you.
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.
