- Animals
- ›Chordates
- ›Vertebrates
- ›Ray-finned Fishes
- ›Spiny-rayed fishes
- ›Butterflyfishes, Angelfishes, and Allies
- ›Angelfishes
- ›Centropyge

Orangeback Angelfish
Centropyge acanthops
The orangeback angelfish or African pygmy angelfish (Centropyge acanthops) is an omnivorous marine angelfish. It has a blue body and yellow to orange colouration from the head and across the back. It is easily confused with the cherubfish (Centropyge argi), but in the latter the yellow to orange colouration only covers the head. It is native to the east coast of Africa, and reaches a maximum length of 8 cm.
From the article Orangeback angelfish on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), quoted section by section
Description
The orangeback angelfish has the head, upper flanks, the dorsal fin and the caudal fin are golden yellow in colour. The lower flanks and the anal fin are black with many dense purple spots. Their eyes are ringed with blue. This species attains a maximum total length of 8 centimetres (3.1 in).
Range & habitat
The orangeback angelfish is found in the western Indian Ocean. It occurs along the East African coast from Somalia south to East London in the Eastern Cape Province, as well as Madagascar, Seychelles, Comoros, the Chagos Islands and the Mascarene Islands. In Asia it has been recorded from the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea off Yemen, including Socotra, and Oman as well as the Maldives. It has also been recorded from the Australian territory of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.
Wikipedia: “Distribution”
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
—
geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Centropyge acanthops in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 96935.