[1] This species lives in reefs on the continental shelf and is rare around oceanic islands.

[2] It prefers areas where there is a rich growth of coral in silty inner coastal reefs and lagoons.

[4] Like all other angelfish it is a protogynous hermaphrodite, with all individuals being female initially and the dominant ones changing to males.

[5] Chaetodontoplus mesoleucus was first formally described in 1787 by the German naturalist Marcus Elieser Bloch (1723–1799) with the type locality given as Japan.

[6] The specific name is a compound of mesos meaning “middle” and leucus meaning “white” which Bloch did not explain, it may refer to how the white front half of body shades into the black rear half in the middle of the flanks.