---
title: Golden Dottyback (Chlidichthys auratus)
scientific_name: Chlidichthys auratus
common_name: Golden Dottyback
taxon: Dottyback
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-07T21:51:10.977Z
updated: 2026-08-21T12:31:06.684Z
tags: Golden Dottyback, Chlidichthys auratus, Dottyback, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/dottyback/golden-dottyback
---

# Golden Dottyback (*Chlidichthys auratus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Dottyback (*Pseudochromidae*)
- **Size:** up to 4.5 cm
- **Depth:** 2-30 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Ceilings of small caves and overhangs
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Endemic:** Endemic to the Red Sea
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- bright golden yellow, no markings
- swims upside down along cave ceilings
- shy, but comes back to look at you
- up to 4.5 cm

It swims upside down, and it is not confused.

Fish that live on the ceilings of caves orient to the surface above them rather than to gravity, so this one spends most of its life belly-up against the rock, moving along the roof of an overhang as if it were the floor. Cardinalfish, some gobies and several cave-dwelling groupers do the same thing, and the arrangement makes sense: the ceiling is a surface with a wall of open water beneath it, so the fish gets cover overhead, an escape route in every direction and food drifting past below.

The golden color, which reads as unmissable in a torch beam, is nearly invisible without one. Yellow disappears at about twenty meters, and in a shaded cave much shallower than that this fish looks like a pale gray smudge until you light it.

What it does next is the memorable part, and the regional guide notes it too: it retreats when you approach, then comes back out to look at you. Wait without moving and it will be out again in under a minute, hanging upside down a hand's width away, studying the dome port.

It lives in the Red Sea and nowhere else.

## Also known as

- **English:** golden dottyback
- **Portuguese:** Pseudodonzela-dourada
- **Czech:** sapínovec zlatavý

## Scientific synonyms

- *Pseudoplesiops auratus* (Lubbock, 1975)

## Range

Red Sea

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/dottyback/golden-dottyback)*
*Updated: August 21, 2026*