Pajama cardinalfish
Amazing fact
Male pajama cardinalfish cannot feed while brooding eggs in their mouths.
Oregon Coast Aquarium
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An illustration based on the real animal.
A little discovery to share.
Male pajama cardinalfish cannot feed while brooding eggs in their mouths.
THE REAL WORLD
The real Pajama cardinalfish
- Scientific name
- Sphaeramia nematoptera
- Japanese name
- マンジュウイシモチ
- Group
- Ocean animals
- Order
- Kurtiformes
- Family
- Apogonidae
- Genus
- Sphaeramia
It lives in the seas from south of Ishigaki Island across the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
During the day it stays among the branches of corals, and when it gets dark it comes out above them.
How the Pajama cardinalfish lives
It eats small shrimps, crabs and other small crustaceans. It often lives in groups. Newly hatched young drift and float in ocean currents. They later settle on reefs and find a branching coral to return to each day.
Oregon Coast AquariumBasic data
- Range
- South of Ishigaki Island and the Indo-Pacific
- Conservation status in Japan
- Near Threatened (NT)Ministry of the Environment of Japan, Marine Red List (2017)
Where the Pajama cardinalfish has been recorded
Records: GBIF.org (CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records, retrieved 2026-11-07). Map: Natural EarthSee the records on GBIF
Watch wild animals from a distance. Do not touch or feed them, and take care of the places where they live.
Names around the world
- 日本語
- マンジュウイシモチ
- 简体中文
- 丝鳍天竺鲷
- 繁體中文
- 絲鰭圓天竺鯛
- Español
- Cardenal pijama
- Français
- Apogon-pyjama
- Deutsch
- Pyjama-Kardinalbarsch
- Português (Brasil)
- Cardeal-de-pijama
- Italiano
- Pesce cardinale pigiama
- Bahasa Indonesia
- Capungan piyama
Names come from Wikidata and iNaturalist records. Where a language has no recorded name, we use the scientific name.
Sources and how we check
- 鳥羽水族館 — マンジュウイシモチChecked: 2026-11-04
- Oregon Coast Aquarium — Pajama CardinalfishChecked: 2026-11-07
- Ministry of the Environment of Japan, Marine Red List (2017)Checked: 2026-11-07
We check each fact against its source. The illustrations simplify how the real animal looks.
The classification (class, order, family, genus) follows Wikidata records, checked against GBIF. Classifications can change as research goes on.
The basic data are the values given in each source. They vary with how the animal is measured, whether it is male or female, and whether it lives in the wild or in captivity.
The conservation status in Japan is the category in the Red Lists of the Ministry of the Environment of Japan, which assess the risk of extinction for wild animals in Japan.
This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.
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