---
title: Manyspine Angelfish (Centropyge multispinis)
scientific_name: Centropyge multispinis
common_name: Manyspine Angelfish
taxon: Angelfishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-28T09:34:43.930Z
updated: 2026-08-13T13:43:02.021Z
tags: Manyspine Angelfish, Centropyge multispinis, Angelfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/angelfishes/manyspine-angelfish
---

# Manyspine Angelfish (*Centropyge multispinis*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Angelfishes (*Pomacanthidae*)
- **Size:** up to 14 cm
- **Depth:** 1-30 m
- **Diet:** Herbivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Rubble and coral with plenty of holes, never far from cover
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- small dark brown fish with faint darker bars, looking black in shade
- blue edges to the dorsal, anal and tail fins, visible in good light
- sharp spine on the lower corner of the gill cover, as in all angelfishes
- length up to 14 cm

A small dark angelfish that reads as black from a distance and turns out, in good light, to be deep brown with blue-edged fins and faint bars. Up to 14 cm (5.5 in), always within a body length of a hole.

The spine at the corner of the gill cover is what makes it an angelfish rather than a butterflyfish - the same feature the whole family is named for, and the reason a hand reaching into a hole after one comes out cut.

Socially it runs a harem. A male holds a territory containing several females and visits each in turn; if he disappears, the dominant female changes sex within days and takes over. So a group's structure is a queue, and the fish at the front of it changes body chemistry rather than moving house.

Spawning happens at dusk. The pair rises a meter or two off the bottom, releases eggs and sperm into open water, and drops back into the reef immediately - a thirty-second event repeated most evenings through the season, which is why an evening dive on rubble is worth doing slowly.

## Also known as

- **English:** dusky angelfish, Brown Pygmy Angelfish, Bluefin Dwarf
- **French:** Poisson-ange nain brun, Poisson-ange brun
- **DA:** Mangepigget Dværgkejserfisk

## Scientific synonyms

- *Centropyge multispinus* (Playfair, 1867)
- *Centropyge somervilli* Regan, 1905
- *Holacanthus multispinis* Playfair, 1867

## Range

Comoros, East Africa, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Madagascar, Red Sea, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/angelfishes/manyspine-angelfish)*
*Updated: August 13, 2026*