---
title: Spikefin Goby (Discordipinna griessingeri)
scientific_name: Discordipinna griessingeri
common_name: Spikefin Goby
taxon: Gobies
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-23T09:01:14.015Z
updated: 2026-08-12T08:12:12.166Z
tags: Spikefin Goby, Discordipinna griessingeri, Gobies, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/gobies/flame-goby
---

# Spikefin Goby (*Discordipinna griessingeri*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Gobies (*Gobiidae*)
- **Size:** up to 3 cm
- **Depth:** 2-45 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Cathemeral
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** Rubble and coral debris, deep inside crevices
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Gonochoric
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- tiny white fish with narrow orange bars and orange fins
- enormous first dorsal fin, taller than the body, raised in flashes
- black and white eye ringed like a target
- length up to 3 cm

Three centimeters (1.2 in) of white fish barred in orange, with an eye ringed like a target and a first dorsal fin taller than the whole body, carried folded and snapped open in flashes. Finding one is a matter of lying still in front of a rubble patch until something the size of a match head moves.

The fin is a signal, not a sail. It goes up in disputes with neighbors and in courtship, doubling the fish's apparent size for a second at a time, and drops again immediately - which is why most photographs of the species show it folded and most people never know it is there.

It lives inside coral rubble rather than on it, using the interstitial spaces between broken pieces, and rarely ventures more than a few centimeters into the open. That habit, plus the size, is why a species found from this sea to Polynesia was not described until 1974.

The aquarium trade wants it, which for a fish this small and this cryptic means collection pressure that nobody can measure.

## Also known as

- **English:** Spikefin Goby, Flame Goby, Spike-fin goby
- **Czech:** hlaváč Griessingerův
- **Japanese:** ホムラハゼ, Homura-haze, Homurahaze
- **FI:** Purjetokko

## Range

Republic of Mauritius

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/gobies/flame-goby)*
*Updated: August 12, 2026*