Narrow orange bars on a blue-green body, hovering in groups above the reef edge.
A dartfish to about 12 cm, pale blue-green to grey with a long series of narrow orange to salmon bars down the flank and a short reddish bar running back from the corner of the mouth across the cheek. The bars are the mark and there are many of them, close together, from behind the head to the tail base. Ptereleotris evides is not barred at all but pale in front and black behind; Ptereleotris grammica carries yellow stripes running lengthwise rather than bars.
Feeds on zooplankton in the water column and is more often in loose aggregations than in pairs, sometimes several dozen fish above one stretch of rubble. Individual fish keep to holes below them and drop when a shadow crosses, the whole group going down within a second or two of each other. It prefers shallower, more exposed ground than the other dartfish here — the upper part of a slope or a reef edge with current running over it — so on a muck site it is found at the coral margin rather than out on the sand.
Recorded from about 2 to 25 m. The aggregation makes it easy to find and hard to photograph well, since the fish nearest the camera goes down first and the rest follow; a position taken at the level of the group rather than above it holds them up in the water for longer.
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.
