--- title: Duskytail Chromis (Chromis pelloura) scientific_name: Chromis pelloura common_name: Duskytail Chromis taxon: Pomacentridae published: 2024-11-14T15:51:17.344Z updated: 2026-08-25T21:06:04.725Z tags: Duskytail Chromis, Chromis pelloura, Pomacentridae, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/pomacentridae/duskytail-chromis --- # Duskytail Chromis (*Chromis pelloura*) ## Quick facts - **Group:** Pomacentridae (*Pomacentridae*) - **Size:** up to 14 cm - **Depth:** 30-50 m - **Diet:** Planktivore - **Activity:** Diurnal - **Rarity:** Very Rare - **Habitat:** Steep outer slopes below 30 m in the Gulf of Aqaba - **Reproduction:** Egg layer - **Endemic:** Endemic to the Red Sea ## How to recognise it - large for a chromis, light gray to bluish overall - dark, dusky tail with a broad black bar across its base - black spot in the armpit at the base of the pectoral fin - deep water on steep drop-offs, singly or in small loose groups - up to 14 cm Everything known about this fish comes from the top of one gulf. The duskytail chromis has been recorded from the northern Gulf of Aqaba and from nowhere else on earth, which makes a range of a few dozen kilometers of coastline the entire world of the species. Randall and Allen described it in 1982. It lives on steep outer slopes between about 30 and 50 m, hanging above the drop-off alone or in small loose groups and picking zooplankton out of the water. That depth is the reason most divers have never seen one: the top of its range is the bottom of a normal recreational dive, and the fish is not common even where it belongs. It is a big chromis, up to 14 cm, and pale rather than brown: light gray with a bluish cast, a black spot in the armpit of the pectoral fin, and a dark tail with a broad black bar across its base. That tail is what the name is about and, at 40 m with the red gone out of the light, it is the mark that carries. A species with one population and no second one anywhere is a fragile arrangement, and the coast it depends on holds a commercial port, two cities and a heavily used dive industry. It was written up in the Threatened Fishes of the World series on exactly that ground. The breeding biology is the usual damselfish one: eggs laid on a cleaned patch of hard bottom, stuck in place, guarded and fanned by the male until they hatch. What is not known is how much of the Saudi and Egyptian side of the northern Red Sea has been searched at that depth, which is where any additional population would turn up. ## Also known as - **English:** duskytail chromis, Dusky Chromis - **Spanish:** Castañuela lúgubre - **Portuguese:** Donzela-cinzenta-do-golfo - **Czech:** sapín rudomořský - **CA:** Castanyoleta d'Àqaba ## Range Red Sea --- *Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/pomacentridae/duskytail-chromis)* *Updated: August 25, 2026*