---
title: Talbot’s Cardinalfish (Apogon talboti)
scientific_name: Apogon talboti
common_name: Talbot’s Cardinalfish
taxon: Cardinals
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-08T11:10:37.231Z
updated: 2026-08-19T09:17:40.133Z
tags: Talbot’s Cardinalfish, Apogon talboti, Cardinals, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/cardinals/talbots-cardinalfish
---

# Talbot’s Cardinalfish (*Apogon talboti*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Cardinals (*Apogonidae*)
- **Size:** up to 14 cm
- **Depth:** 0-37 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Reef caves, ledges and deep crevices
- **Reproduction:** Mouthbrooder
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- deep flame red over the whole body, unmarked
- large dark eye
- in caves and under ledges, coming out only after dark
- up to 14 cm

Flame red, fourteen centimeters, and almost nobody sees it.

Red is the family's default color and it is worth understanding why. Water absorbs red light first: by ten meters most of it is gone, by twenty there is effectively none, and an animal that reflects only red has nothing left to reflect. It reads as black, or as nothing at all. For a fish that works at night and hides by day, red is the cheapest possible invisibility, and it costs nothing to make.

The catch is what happens when a diver arrives with a torch. Under white light at close range the same fish is a brilliant scarlet, which is why the reef looks so different in a photograph with strobes than it does to the eye. The colors were always there; the light was not.

So the entire cardinalfish family, along with the soldierfish and squirrelfish that share their caves, appears drab or invisible to anyone diving without a light, and spectacular to anyone with one.

This species is among the largest of them here, and it stays deep in caves and crevices through the day.

## Also known as

- **English:** Flame Cardinalfish, Talbot's Cardinalfish
- **Portuguese:** Cardeal-flamejante
- **Czech:** parmovec Talbotův
- **Japanese:** アカネテンジクダイ, Akanetenjikudai

## Scientific synonyms

- *Ostorhinchus talboti* (Smith, 1961)

## Range

Republic of Mauritius, Tanzania, Zanzibar

---

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