---
title: Sunrise Dottyback (Pseudochromis flavivertex)
scientific_name: Pseudochromis flavivertex
common_name: Sunrise Dottyback
taxon: Dottyback
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-07-07T11:00:23.562Z
updated: 2026-08-21T09:24:32.551Z
tags: Sunrise Dottyback, Pseudochromis flavivertex, Dottyback, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/dottyback/sunrise-dottyback
---

# Sunrise Dottyback (*Pseudochromis flavivertex*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Dottyback (*Pseudochromidae*)
- **Size:** up to 8 cm
- **Depth:** 2-30 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Lower reef slopes beside sand and mud
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Endemic:** Endemic to the Red Sea
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- yellow along the whole back, from the snout to the tail
- blue-gray flanks fading to a yellow wash below
- lower reef, close to sand or mud rather than up in the coral
- up to 8 cm

Dottybacks do not scatter their eggs and leave. The male clears a hole in the rock, courts a female into it, and what she leaves behind is a ball: a few hundred eggs bound together by fine filaments into a single sphere, sticky enough to stay put in surge.

Then he guards it. For the next several days the male stays with the ball, fanning it with his fins to keep water moving through, mouthing it to clean off silt and fungus, and driving off anything that approaches. He does not feed much while he is doing it.

It is a good deal on a reef where almost everything eats eggs. Broadcast spawners lose most of their output within minutes; a guarded ball wedged in a crevice loses very little, which is how a fish this small maintains a population without producing millions of eggs.

This one is named for the color scheme: yellow laid along the whole back over blue-gray flanks, like light coming up over a ridge. Look for it low on the reef, near sand or mud, rather than up among the corals where the other dottybacks are.

## Also known as

- **English:** sunrise dottyback, Yellowback dottyback
- **German:** Gelbrücken-Zwergbarsch
- **Spanish:** Perca enana de dorso amarillo
- **Portuguese:** Pseudodonzela-de-dorso-amarelo
- **Dutch:** Geelblauwe Dwergbaars
- **Czech:** sapínovec žlutohřbetý
- **Russian:** Желтоспинный ложнохромис

## Range

Red Sea

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