---
title: Gelatinous Cardinalfish (Pseudamia gelatinosa)
scientific_name: Pseudamia gelatinosa
common_name: Gelatinous Cardinalfish
taxon: Cardinals
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-08T22:18:15.471Z
updated: 2026-08-19T09:48:56.102Z
tags: Gelatinous Cardinalfish, Pseudamia gelatinosa, Cardinals, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/cardinals/gelatinous-cardinalfish
---

# Gelatinous Cardinalfish (*Pseudamia gelatinosa*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Cardinals (*Apogonidae*)
- **Size:** 11 cm
- **Depth:** 1-64 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Caves, crevices and rubble; deep in cover by day
- **Reproduction:** Mouthbrooder
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- soft, flabby, pale body with no obvious pattern
- rounded tail and a large mouth
- deep in a crevice by day, out over rubble at night
- up to 11 cm

The name is about the texture. These are soft, loose-bodied fish with flabby flesh, thin skin and none of the firm muscular build of a cardinalfish that spends its life holding station in current.

That is what happens when an animal stops needing to swim. This one lives inside the reef: caves, crevices, the spaces under rubble, moving short distances over the bottom at night and never crossing open water at speed. Muscle is expensive tissue to build and to keep, and a fish that does not sprint can put the savings elsewhere. The same softness turns up again and again in animals that live in holes.

The cost is that it is helpless in the open. A gelatinous cardinalfish flushed out of cover in daylight is one of the easier meals on the reef, which is why it does not come out.

At eleven centimeters it is a decent-sized fish that almost no diver has seen, pale, unpatterned and blunt, working the bottom in the dark and back inside the rock before the light returns.

## Also known as

- **English:** gelatinous cardinalfish, Jelly Cardinal, Jelly Cardinalfish
- **French:** Cardinal Gélatineux
- **Portuguese:** Cardeal-espátula-gelatinoso
- **Czech:** parmovec nízkotělý
- **Japanese:** ヌメリテンジクダイ, Numeritenjikudai
- **Chinese:** 大目側仔, 大面側仔, 犬牙擬天竺鯛
- **Russian:** Желатинообразная псевдамия
- **FIJ:** tina

## Scientific synonyms

- *Pseudamia gelantinosa* Smith, 1956

## Range

Djibouti, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Red Sea, Republic of Mauritius, Seychelles, South Africa

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/cardinals/gelatinous-cardinalfish)*
*Updated: August 19, 2026*