---
title: Rubble Dwarfgoby (Eviota prasina)
scientific_name: Eviota prasina
common_name: Rubble Dwarfgoby
taxon: Gobies
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-23T09:27:31.381Z
updated: 2026-08-17T15:46:05.904Z
tags: Rubble Dwarfgoby, Eviota prasina, Gobies, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/gobies/rubble-dwarfgoby
---

# Rubble Dwarfgoby (*Eviota prasina*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Gobies (*Gobiidae*)
- **Size:** 3.1 cm
- **Depth:** 1-65 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Rubble and algae-covered dead reef near shore
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- translucent greenish body with six or seven dark bars showing through from inside
- red-brown speckling on the head, reddish scale edges
- black spot on the upper half of the tail base
- males with the first dorsal spine drawn out into a filament
- up to 3.1 cm

The shortest life of any vertebrate on earth belongs to this genus. One dwarfgoby, measured on the Great Barrier Reef, lives fifty-nine days from hatching to death: three weeks adrift as larvae, a few weeks on the reef, breed, done. No backboned animal anywhere is known to turn over faster.

This species is one of the same set: three centimeters, translucent green, its bars visible through the body wall rather than painted on it, sitting on rubble and dead algae-covered reef within a few meters of shore. You can look straight at one and register nothing but a shadow on the rock.

Speed is the whole strategy. An animal that small is eaten constantly, so it grows fast, breeds early and often, and is replaced. The population is not a set of individuals so much as a standing flow.

The males carry a long filament off the first dorsal spine, which they raise at each other and at females, and which is the easiest thing to spot on an animal you can barely see.

## Also known as

- **English:** green bubble goby, Rubble Eviota, Pepperfin Pygmy Goby
- **Japanese:** ナンヨウミドリハゼ, Nan-yomidorihaze
- **Chinese:** 翠綠磯塘鱧（蔥綠磯塘鱧）, 蔥綠磯塘鱧
- **KO:** 남방풀비늘망둑

## Scientific synonyms

- *Allogobius viridis* Waite, 1904
- *Eleotris prasinus* Klunzinger, 1871
- *Eviota prasinia* (Kluzinger, 1871)
- *Eviota verna* Smith, 1958

## Range

Comoros, Eritrea, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Republic of Mauritius, Seychelles

---

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