---
title: Magnus' Shrimpgoby (Amblyeleotris sungami)
scientific_name: Amblyeleotris sungami
common_name: Magnus' Shrimpgoby
taxon: Gobies
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-20T11:38:06.943Z
updated: 2026-08-17T15:46:05.849Z
tags: Magnus' Shrimpgoby, Amblyeleotris sungami, Gobies, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/gobies/magnus-shrimpgoby
---

# Magnus' Shrimpgoby (*Amblyeleotris sungami*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Gobies (*Gobiidae*)
- **Size:** 10 cm
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Open sand on clear-water reefs, sharing a shrimp burrow
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- white body crossed by orange-red bars
- dense small pale blue spots, with scattered orange-yellow ones
- long tail, about a third of the total length
- at a burrow mouth on clean open sand, with a shrimp working behind it
- up to 10 cm

Read the name backwards. Sungami is Magnus, and the fish was named in 1969 for Dietrich Magnus, who spent his career on the partnership between gobies and snapping shrimp. Reversing a name to build a species epithet is an old trick in zoology, used when the obvious form is already taken or when the author wants the tribute without the awkwardness of magnusi.

The fish itself is one of the prettier shrimpgobies here: white with orange-red bars and a dense scatter of pale blue spots, sitting at the mouth of a burrow it did not dig and cannot maintain. The shrimp does that. The goby watches, and signals with its tail.

It likes clean sand and clear water, which separates it from the shrimpgobies that tolerate silt, and it will let a diver approach if the approach is slow and low. Stand up over it and you get one flick of the tail and an empty hole.

## Also known as

- **English:** Magnus' goby, Magnus' Prawn-goby, Magnus' Shrimpgoby
- **Czech:** hlaváč příčnopruhý

## Scientific synonyms

- *Cryptocentrus sungami* Klausewitz, 1969

## Range

Red Sea, Seychelles

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/gobies/magnus-shrimpgoby)*
*Updated: August 17, 2026*