---
title: Twospot Cardinalfish (Cheilodipterus novemstriatus)
scientific_name: Cheilodipterus novemstriatus
common_name: Twospot Cardinalfish
taxon: Cardinals
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-08T15:15:01.016Z
updated: 2026-08-15T13:27:34.244Z
tags: Twospot Cardinalfish, Cheilodipterus novemstriatus, Cardinals, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/cardinals/twospot-cardinalfish
---

# Twospot Cardinalfish (*Cheilodipterus novemstriatus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Cardinals (*Apogonidae*)
- **Size:** up to 8 cm
- **Depth:** 1-50 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Coral heads and urchins in shallow lagoons
- **Reproduction:** Mouthbrooder, Gonochoric
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- silver body with several dark stripes and two black spots on the tail base
- one spot above the other, which is the field mark
- in tight groups over branching coral
- length up to 8 cm

Eight centimeters (3 in) of striped silver fish in a tight group over a coral head, with two black spots stacked on the tail base - the mark that names it and separates it from every other striped cardinalfish here.

It belongs to this sea and the Arabian region, and it is one of the fish that fills the middle water of a shallow lagoon: hundreds of them, motionless by day, spread out at night.

Spots at the tail are a common arrangement on this family, and the usual explanation is that they draw a strike to the wrong end. A predator aiming at what it takes for a head gets a mouthful of tail and a fish going the other way.

Males brood in the mouth for about a week. In tight groups like these the sequence is easy to watch across a colony: at any time a few of the fish will have swollen jaws and be refusing to feed while the rest are hunting.

## Also known as

- **English:** Twospot Cardinalfish
- **French:** Apogon à neuf lignes
- **Portuguese:** Cardeal-de-nove-linhas
- **Czech:** parmovec indooceánský

## Scientific synonyms

- *Apogon novemstriatus* Rüppell, 1838
- *Cheilodipterus bipunctatus* (Lachner, 1951)
- *Paramia bipunctata* Lachner, 1951

## Range

Eritrea, Red Sea

---

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