---
title: Ornate Ghost Pipefish (Solenostomus paradoxus)
scientific_name: Solenostomus paradoxus
common_name: Ornate Ghost Pipefish
taxon: Ghost pipefishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-05-06T15:49:11.160Z
updated: 2026-08-16T06:24:39.174Z
tags: Ornate Ghost Pipefish, Solenostomus paradoxus, Ghost pipefishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/ghost-pipefishes/ornate-ghost-pipefish
---

# Ornate Ghost Pipefish (*Solenostomus paradoxus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Ghost pipefishes (*Solenostomus*)
- **Size:** 12 cm
- **Depth:** 5-40 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** Reef edges with current, among crinoids, gorgonians and drifting weed
- **Reproduction:** Brooder
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- body covered in branching skin filaments that copy the host crinoid or weed
- large fan-shaped pelvic and tail fins
- long tubular snout
- female noticeably larger, her pelvic fins fused into a pouch under the body
- up to 12 cm

Everything about this fish is borrowed. It has no color of its own worth the name: it takes the red of the crinoid, the yellow of the weed or the black and white of the gorgonian it has settled into, and it grows branching skin filaments that copy the shape of the host as well. Divers swim past them constantly.

The breeding is what turns the family upside down. In seahorses and true pipefish the male carries the eggs, and it is one of the most repeated facts in the sea. Ghost pipefish are the exception. Here the female broods: her pelvic fins are fused into a pouch under the body, and she carries the whole clutch in it until they hatch. She is also visibly the larger of the pair.

They arrive as drifters. The young spend their early life in the plankton, clear as glass, then settle onto a host, take on its colors within days, breed, and die. The entire adult phase lasts a matter of months, which is why a site can be full of them one season and hold none at all the next.

## Also known as

- **English:** Ornate Ghost Pipefish, Harlequin ghost pipefish, Ghost Pipefish
- **Hebrew:** זרבובית מפוארת
- **French:** Poisson-fantôme arlequin
- **Italian:** Ago fantasma arlecchino
- **German:** Fetzengeisterfisch, Harlekin-Geisterpfeifenfisch, Schmuck-Geisterpfeifenfisch
- **Spanish:** Pez Pipa Fantasma Arlequín
- **Portuguese:** Peixe-cachimbo-fantasma-paradoxo
- **Dutch:** Harlekijn spookfluitvis
- **Swedish:** Spökkantnål
- **Czech:** vějířník třásnitý
- **Japanese:** ニシキフウライウオ, Fûrai-uo, Nishikifuraiuo
- **Chinese:** (細吻)剃刀魚, (细吻)剃刀鱼, 刀口魚
- **DA:** Frynset Spøgelsesnålefisk
- **MSA:** Unduk-unduk Ranting, Undok-undok
- **TH:** ปลาจิ้มฟันจระเข้ปีศาจ

## Scientific synonyms

- *Fistularia paradoxa* Pallas, 1770
- *Solenostomatichthys paradoxus* (Pallas, 1770)

## Range

Comoros, Indian Ocean, Republic of Mauritius

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/ghost-pipefishes/ornate-ghost-pipefish)*
*Updated: August 16, 2026*