The male cuckoo wrasse builds a nest in rocky areas using mainly algae and seaweed during the breeding season. They look for rocks and clean them with their sharp teeth and then tie up the rock with algae and seaweed to give it a dish-like structure. Like many other fishes, the cuckoo wrasse is oviparous in nature. A female cuckoo wrasse can lay about 1000 eggs each season and this huge clutch size helps the population of marine fish to be stable. Cuckoo wrasse eggs are often targeted by various marine animals. The male cuckoo wrasse takes up the responsibility of guarding the nest after fertilizing the eggs.