---
title: Glassfishes (Ambassidae)
scientific_name: Ambassidae
common_name: Glassfishes
rank: Family
published: 2026-08-10T14:14:16.818Z
updated: 2026-08-10T15:12:39.144Z
tags: Glassfishes, Ambassidae, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/glassfishes
---

# Glassfishes (*Ambassidae*)

## Quick facts

- **Rank:** Family
- **Scientific name:** Ambassidae
- **Body shape:** Oval - Egg-shaped body, deeper than it is thick - damselfishes, surgeonfishes.
- **Species listed here:** 1

## How to recognise this group

- body so transparent the spine and gut show through
- silvery gut sac and large eye in an otherwise clear fish
- small, deep-bodied and rarely more than a hand long
- hangs in dense shoals in shade, under jetties and in caves

Glassfishes are small, deep-bodied fishes whose flesh is transparent enough to show the spine and the silvery sac of the gut straight through the side. A shoal of them in a cave mouth reads as a shimmer rather than as fish, which is exactly the point: transparency is camouflage in open water where there is nothing to hide behind.

They gather in dense, slow-moving schools in shade - under jetties, inside wrecks, in the roof of a cave - and spill out at dusk to feed on zooplankton. Most species prefer the edge where the sea meets fresh water, so estuaries, mangroves and lagoons hold more of them than open reef does.

The family is far better known to aquarists than to divers, and not happily: the so-called painted glassfish sold in shops is a glassfish injected with dye, a practice that kills most of the fish it is done to. The wild animal has no colour to paint.


## Species (1)

- [Dussumier's Glassfish (Ambassis dussumieri)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/glassfishes/dussumiers-glassfish)

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/glassfishes)*
*Updated: August 10, 2026*