---
title: Arabic Cardinalfish (Cheilodipterus arabicus)
scientific_name: Cheilodipterus arabicus
common_name: Arabic Cardinalfish
taxon: Cardinals
published: 2024-11-08T14:15:02.192Z
updated: 2026-08-15T13:34:00.121Z
tags: Arabic Cardinalfish, Cheilodipterus arabicus, Cardinals, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/cardinals/arabic-cardinalfish
---

# Arabic Cardinalfish (*Cheilodipterus arabicus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Cardinals (*Apogonidae*)
- **Size:** up to 18 cm
- **Depth:** 3-25 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Coral-rich reef and lagoon
- **Reproduction:** Mouthbrooder, Gonochoric

## How to recognise it

- silver with several dark stripes, the middle one running onto the tail
- tail base without a distinct round spot, unlike its relatives
- canine teeth present but small
- length up to 18 cm

A striped silver cardinalfish of the Red Sea and Arabian coasts, eighteen centimeters (7 in), and one of a group that is genuinely hard to sort out underwater.

Four striped cardinalfish share this reef, and they differ mainly in what the tail base does: a black spot, two spots, a spot ringed in yellow, or a stripe running through onto the fin. That detail is the whole identification, it is at the back of the fish, and it is the part a photographer usually crops. Get the tail in frame and the group becomes easy.

It hangs in the shade by day, hunts small fish and crustaceans at night, and broods in the mouth like the others.

Regional species like this one are worth naming carefully. A visitor with an Indo-Pacific field guide will key it out to something else entirely, because the book covers a fauna that starts where this one ends.

## Also known as

- **English:** Tiger Cardinalfish, dogtooth cardinalfish, lined cardinalfish
- **Portuguese:** Cardeal-de-Jeddah
- **Czech:** parmovec psí
- **Japanese:** アヤコショウダイ

## Scientific synonyms

- *Centropomus arabicus* (Gmelin, 1789)
- *Cheilodipterus caninus* Smith, 1949
- *Cheilodipterus lineatus* (Forsskål, 1775)
- *Perca arabica* Gmelin, 1789
- *Perca lineata* Forsskål, 1775

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/cardinals/arabic-cardinalfish)*
*Updated: August 15, 2026*