---
title: Regal Angelfish (Pygoplites diacanthus)
scientific_name: Pygoplites diacanthus
common_name: Regal Angelfish
taxon: Angelfishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2023-12-18T22:31:21.391Z
updated: 2026-08-13T16:14:19.319Z
tags: Regal Angelfish, Pygoplites diacanthus, Angelfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/angelfishes/regal-angelfish
---

# Regal Angelfish (*Pygoplites diacanthus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Angelfishes (*Pomacanthidae*)
- **Size:** up to 25 cm
- **Depth:** 1-80 m
- **Diet:** Omnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Coral-rich reef with caves and overhangs
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- orange body crossed by blue-edged white bars
- yellow tail, dark blue anal fin with pale lines
- chest yellow-orange here, gray in the Pacific
- never far from a hole, and dives into it before you are close
- length up to 25 cm

Orange, crossed by white bars edged in blue, with a yellow tail - the fish everyone photographs badly, because it puts a coral head between itself and the camera and keeps it there. To 25 cm (10 in).

The local ones are not quite the ones in the books. Red Sea and western Indian Ocean fish have a yellow-orange chest; from the Pacific the same species has it gray. The difference is consistent enough that a photograph can be placed to an ocean by that patch alone.

It eats sponges and tunicates, and that is the whole reason it is famous in a way it never asked for. In an aquarium a specialist like this usually refuses everything on offer and starves, which is how the most beautiful fish on the reef became the one experienced keepers warn each other about. On the reef it is simply doing what it does: working the overhangs, picking at things nothing else wants.

Pairs hold a territory and stay in it for years. Like other angelfish it starts female and can turn male, so a pair that loses one fish reorganizes rather than dissolves.

## Also known as

- **English:** regal angelfish, Regal Angelfish pasific, royal angelfish
- **Arabic:** Moscht
- **Hebrew:** פסון מרהיב
- **French:** Holacanthe duc, Poisson-ange duc, Poisson-ange royal
- **Italian:** Pesce angelo reale
- **German:** Pfauen-Kaiserfisch, Pfauenaugen-Kaiserfisch, Pfauenkaiserfisch
- **Spanish:** Pez ángel real
- **Portuguese:** Peixe-anjo-real
- **Dutch:** Pauwoogkeizersvis
- **Swedish:** Påfågelkejsarfisk
- **Polish:** ustnik słoneczny
- **Czech:** pomec paví
- **Japanese:** ニシキヤッコ, Nishikiyakko
- **Chinese:** 双棘甲尻鱼, 帝王神仙魚, 皇帝
- **Russian:** Королевская рыба-ангел
- **CA:** Peix àngel reial
- **DA:** Påfuglekejserfisk
- **FIJ:** lati ni daveta
- **SL:** kraljevski cesarček
- **TAH:** paraharaha
- **TGL:** Paru-parang dagat
- **TH:** ปลาสินสมุทรบั้งเหลือง

## Scientific synonyms

- *Chaetodon diacanthus* Boddaert, 1772
- *Holacanthus diacanthus* (Boddaert, 1772)
- *Pygoplites boddaerti* Gmelin, 1789
- *Pygoplites dux* Gmelin, 1789

## Range

Comoros, Djibouti, Federal Republic of Somalia, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Red Sea, Seychelles, South Africa

---

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