One white bar behind the head; the female is large and dark, the male small and bright red.
To about 14 cm. Males are bright orange-red with a single white bar behind the head. Females are larger and darken to a deep red-black over the flanks with age, keeping the head bar. The spine-cheek anemonefish shows a similar size and colour split between the sexes but has three bars and a cheek spine.
It uses the bubble-tip anemone Entacmaea quadricolor, usually as a single pair with juveniles on the margins, and holds shallow water — it is one of the anemonefish a diver meets in the first few metres. Females are aggressive at the nest and will strike a mask repeatedly. Recorded from about 2 to 25 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.
