---
title: Blackline Fangblenny (Meiacanthus nigrolineatus)
scientific_name: Meiacanthus nigrolineatus
common_name: Blackline Fangblenny
taxon: Combtooth blenny
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-16T04:23:57.140Z
updated: 2026-08-14T11:36:01.827Z
tags: Blackline Fangblenny, Meiacanthus nigrolineatus, Combtooth blenny, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/combtooth-blenny/blackline-fangblenny
---

# Blackline Fangblenny (*Meiacanthus nigrolineatus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Combtooth blenny (*Blenniidae*)
- **Size:** up to 6 cm
- **Depth:** 7-55 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Coral reef and drop-offs, in open water near other fish
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Gonochoric
- **Hazard:** Venomous
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- very small slender blenny with a single dark line along a pale body
- hovers in midwater with the tail curled slightly downward
- shelters in abandoned worm tubes, head out
- length up to 6 cm

Six centimeters (2.4 in) of thin, pale, dark-lined fish hovering off a wall - the smallest of the three fangblennies here and the one most divers never notice.

It makes its living the same way as its relatives: approach a larger fish from behind at speed, take a bite of mucus, scale or fin, and be gone before anything turns around. The fangs and the venom gland come as standard in this genus, and the venom is again a getaway tool rather than a weapon.

Home is a hole it did not make - an abandoned worm tube, a hole left by a boring bivalve, a gap in dead coral. The fish reverses in tail-first and watches from the entrance, and that head sticking out of a tube is how it is usually photographed.

It is described from this sea and lives in a narrow range around it, which makes a small brown fish rather more interesting than it looks.

## Also known as

- **English:** blackline blenny, Blackline Fangblenny
- **Hebrew:** ארסנית כחולה
- **Spanish:** Blenio Dientón de Línea Negra
- **Portuguese:** Blênio-cardinal-do-Mar-Vermelho
- **Czech:** slizoun černopásý

## Range

Red Sea

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/combtooth-blenny/blackline-fangblenny)*
*Updated: August 14, 2026*