---
title: Iridescent Cardinalfish (Pristiapogon kallopterus)
scientific_name: Pristiapogon kallopterus
common_name: Iridescent Cardinalfish
taxon: Cardinals
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-08T21:04:47.047Z
updated: 2026-08-18T21:04:20.926Z
tags: Iridescent Cardinalfish, Pristiapogon kallopterus, Cardinals, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/cardinals/iridescent-cardinalfish
---

# Iridescent Cardinalfish (*Pristiapogon kallopterus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Cardinals (*Apogonidae*)
- **Size:** 15.5 cm
- **Depth:** 3-158 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Reef and rubble from the shallows to deep slopes
- **Reproduction:** Mouthbrooder
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- bronze to brown body with a pearly sheen and dark scale edges
- black spot on the upper tail base
- dark stripe from the snout through the eye, fading behind it
- up to 15.5 cm

The same species lives at three meters and at a hundred and fifty-eight, which is a wider vertical range than almost anything else in this family.

That is a harder thing to do than it looks. Between the top and the bottom of that range the light falls by several orders of magnitude, the temperature drops, the pressure multiplies by fifteen, and the food changes from reef zooplankton to whatever drifts down a slope. A fish that occupies all of it is either extremely tolerant or is really several populations that rarely meet.

For the animal, the deep end is the safer place and the shallow end is the richer one, and species with ranges like this usually turn out to have their densest populations somewhere in the middle, with the extremes occupied by animals that lost the competition higher up.

At fifteen centimeters this is also one of the larger cardinalfish here, bronze with a pearly sheen and dark scale edges, with the usual black tail spot and a stripe through the eye that fades out behind it. Nocturnal, like the rest, and the male broods the eggs.

## Also known as

- **English:** Iridescent Cardinalfish, Saya de Malha Cardinalfish, Kallopterus Cardinalfish
- **French:** Cardinal à Dorsale Jaune, Apogon irisé, Poisson Cardinal
- **Italian:** Pesce cardinale iridescente
- **Portuguese:** Cardeal-de-Saya-de-Malha
- **Czech:** parmovec lesklý
- **Japanese:** カスリイシモチ, Kasuriishimochi
- **Chinese:** 丽鳍棘眼天竺鲷, 大目側仔, 大面側仔
- **TAH:** 'upaparu

## Scientific synonyms

- *Apogon fraenatus yaeyamaensis* Aoyagi, 1943
- *Apogon kallopterus* Bleeker, 1856
- *Apogon snyderi* Jordan & Evermann, 1903
- *Ostorhinchus kallopterus* (Bleeker, 1856)
- *Pristiapogon snyderi* (Jordan & Evermann, 1903)

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/cardinals/iridescent-cardinalfish)*
*Updated: August 18, 2026*