---
title: Flower Cardinalfish (Ostorhinchus fleurieu)
scientific_name: Ostorhinchus fleurieu
common_name: Flower Cardinalfish
taxon: Cardinals
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-08T20:25:51.158Z
updated: 2026-08-15T13:30:54.611Z
tags: Flower Cardinalfish, Ostorhinchus fleurieu, Cardinals, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/cardinals/flower-cardinalfish
---

# Flower Cardinalfish (*Ostorhinchus fleurieu*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Cardinals (*Apogonidae*)
- **Size:** up to 14 cm
- **Depth:** 1-97 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Sheltered reef and lagoon, sometimes in silty water
- **Reproduction:** Mouthbrooder, Gonochoric
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- pale bronze body with a dark line through the eye and a dark spot on the tail base
- large eye, typical of the family
- in loose groups in the shade by day
- length up to 14 cm

A bronze cardinalfish with a dark line through the eye, in the shade under a ledge by day, fourteen centimeters (5.5 in).

At dusk it leaves. Cardinalfish make a nightly commute off the reef into open water and over sand to feed, and return before light - a movement that happens on every reef, every night, and that transfers a great deal of food from open water back into the reef in the form of fish that eat out and come home. On a night dive the water above the sand is full of them.

The big eye is the equipment for that. Everything about this family is built for working in low light: large eyes, a reflective layer behind the retina, and colors that read as black at night.

It is a mouthbrooder like the rest, and the males fast while they carry. Where a colony is big enough, a diver can find a brooding male on almost any dive - look for the fish with the swollen jaw sitting apart from the group.

## Also known as

- **English:** Flower Cardinalfish, Bullseye cardinalfish, Gold Cardinalfish
- **Italian:** Cardinale fiore
- **Portuguese:** Cardeal-indo-malaio
- **Czech:** parmovec mělčinový
- **Japanese:** コンゴウテンジクダイ, Kongotenjikudai
- **Chinese:** 大目側仔, 大面側仔, 斑柄天竺鯛
- **TH:** ปลาอมไข่ดอกไม้

## Scientific synonyms

- *Apogon fleurieu* (Lacepède, 1802)
- *Ostorhynchus fleurieu* Lacepède, 1802

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