A Red Sea cleaner wrasse with four blue lines, working a fixed station that larger fish queue at.
To about 11.5 cm. Juveniles and initial-phase fish are dark with two electric-blue stripes and a black eyespot in the rear of the dorsal and anal fins. Terminal males are uniformly navy blue with a pale blue boomerang mark on the cheek.
The bluestreak cleaner wrasse works the same Red Sea cleaning stations and is the fish to rule out. The eyespot in the rear dorsal and anal fins settles it: this fish has it and the cleaner wrasse never does. The cleaner wrasse also carries a single black stripe that widens towards the tail rather than two blue ones.
The interesting fact about it is the diet change. Juveniles are cleaners and work stations like the bluestreak; adults stop cleaning and eat coral polyps.
Nought to fifteen metres among coral heads on fringing reef. Data Deficient on the IUCN list. Juveniles are working cleaners and should not be handled.
WoRMS accepts Labroides quadrilineatus; FishBase and the IUCN use Larabicus quadrilineatus, which is the same fish in a genus of its own.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.