---
title: Red Sea Angelfish (Apolemichthys xanthotis)
scientific_name: Apolemichthys xanthotis
common_name: Red Sea Angelfish
taxon: Angelfishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-28T09:41:25.099Z
updated: 2026-08-13T20:30:23.964Z
tags: Red Sea Angelfish, Apolemichthys xanthotis, Angelfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/angelfishes/red-sea-angelfish
---

# Red Sea Angelfish (*Apolemichthys xanthotis*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Angelfishes (*Pomacanthidae*)
- **Size:** up to 20 cm
- **Depth:** 10-40 m
- **Diet:** Omnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Coral-rich reef with caves, usually below 15 m
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Endemic:** Endemic to the Red Sea
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- pale gray-white body, dark mask over the eye and a yellow patch behind it
- yellow tail and yellow around the gill cover
- small, shy, and quick to put coral between itself and a camera
- length up to 20 cm

A small pale angelfish with a black mask across the eye and yellow behind it, living deeper than most of its family and lasting about two seconds in an open frame before it is gone.

It lives here and nowhere much else: the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, and that is the whole range. A fish that occurs in one sea has no reserve population to draw on, which is the reason this catalogue flags endemics at all - and why one that is uncommon within a small range deserves more attention than its size suggests.

It feeds on sponges and tunicates, picking at things nothing else competes for, and it works overhangs and cave mouths between fifteen and forty meters. That preference for depth is a real field mark in itself: an angelfish this pale, this small and this deep is this species.

Pairs hold a territory, and like other angelfish it starts female and can turn male, so a pair that loses a fish reorganizes rather than breaking up.

## Also known as

- **English:** Red Sea angelfish, Yellow-ear Angelfish
- **Arabic:** سمك الملاك أصفر الأذن, سمك الملاك البحري الأحمر, Moscht
- **Hebrew:** קיסרון עטור
- **French:** Poisson-ange fumé de la mer rouge
- **Italian:** Pesce angelo del Mar Rosso
- **German:** Arabischer Rauchkaiserfisch
- **Spanish:** Ángel del mar rojo
- **Portuguese:** Peixe-anjo-de-orelha-amarela
- **Czech:** pomec rudomořský
- **CA:** Peix àngel disc
- **DA:** Rødehavskejserfisk

## Scientific synonyms

- *Holacanthus xanthotis* Fraser-Brunner, 1950

## Range

Djibouti, Eritrea, Federal Republic of Somalia, Kenya, Red Sea, Western Indian Ocean

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