 In addition to sea urchins, other living benthic substrates such as soft corals, anemones, hydrozoans, and mangrove roots also serve as microhabitats around which the Banggai cardinalfish group.These groups of fish are rather sedentary, and movements between groups are observed to be very limited, especially because they feed on plankton that pass through water currents.Such limited dispersal of Banggai cardinalfish prevents them from spreading over large geographic ranges, thus serving as a major risk of extinction along with heavy exploitation by aquarium fish collectors, as well as low fecundity.