A temperate chromis that hangs in large aggregations above rocky reef, feeding into the current. The white spot at the tail base gives it the name.
To about 15 cm. Blue-grey to grey-green with a white spot on the tail base below the rear of the dorsal fin, a black spot at the pectoral fin base and a yellow streak on the gill cover.
The yellowback puller shares the coast and the separator is clean: it has a dark diagonal line running from the eye to the rear of the dorsal fin with yellow-brown above it and silver below, plus black upper and lower tail edges. This fish has none of that.
One to about forty metres, and possibly much deeper — the three good sources give maxima of 40, 46 and 106 metres — on inshore and offshore rocky reef. It schools in large numbers well above the bottom feeding on zooplankton and drops to the reef when threatened.
The interesting part is the nesting: it is communal. Eggs are laid together on reef tops and rock faces in boulder ground and guarded by numerous males at once, which is unusual in a family where a male normally guards his own patch.
FishBase’s preferred name for it is brown puller.
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.