A blunt-headed grazing blenny that perches on rubble and scrapes the algal film off it.
A stout blenny to about 14 cm, mottled in olive, brown and cream with darker bars, a scatter of pale blue and white flecks over the flank and a blunt vertical face. The eyes are set high and carry short branched tentacles above them, and there is a second pair of tentacles on the nape. Unlike the fangblennies it has no canines and no interest in other fish; the mouth is set low and underneath, built for scraping.
It grazes the algal film on dead coral and rubble, taking sediment and diatoms in with it, and spends the dive hopping from one perch to the next in short bursts, propped on the pelvic fins. Territories are small and shallow, mostly above about 12 m, which puts the species on the ground divers cross at the start and end of a dive rather than in the middle of one. Males hold a crevice or an empty shell and the eggs are laid inside it and guarded.
The habit of grazing a surface bare is where the aquarium name comes from. In the water it is one of the easier blennies to photograph, because the fish returns to the same perch after a short move and the perch, rather than the fish, is the thing to frame on.
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.