---
title: Filamentous Blenny (Cirripectes filamentosus)
scientific_name: Cirripectes filamentosus
common_name: Filamentous Blenny
taxon: Combtooth blenny
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-18T12:32:45.790Z
updated: 2026-08-14T11:36:02.063Z
tags: Filamentous Blenny, Cirripectes filamentosus, Combtooth blenny, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/combtooth-blenny/filamentous-blenny
---

# Filamentous Blenny (*Cirripectes filamentosus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Combtooth blenny (*Blenniidae*)
- **Size:** up to 8 cm
- **Depth:** 0-20 m
- **Diet:** Herbivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Shallow reef and rubble with algal turf
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Gonochoric
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- dark blenny with a row of fine filaments across the nape, like a fringe
- red-brown with pale speckles, darker head
- perches on coral rock, propped on its pelvic fins
- length up to 8 cm

A dark little blenny with a fringe of fine filaments running across the back of its head like a comb - the field mark of the whole genus, and the only reliable way to name one underwater.

Eight centimeters (3 in) of algal grazer, scraping turf off rock with comb teeth in fast downward pecks. Its territory is a few square meters and it knows every hole in it.

Males guard the eggs. The female lays a sheet of them on the roof or the floor of a crevice, and the male stays with the clutch, fanning it and driving off anything that comes close, until they hatch - which is the standard blenny arrangement and one of the reasons these fish sit tight instead of fleeing.

It is the sort of species a diver swims past a hundred times. Once you start looking at the nape rather than the body, the genus becomes findable.

## Also known as

- **English:** filamentous blenny, Collared Blenny, Dusky Blenny
- **Portuguese:** Blênio-do-coral-do-Indo-Pacífico
- **Czech:** slizoun vláknitý
- **Japanese:** オボロゲタテガミカエルウオ, Oborogetategamikaeruuo

## Scientific synonyms

- *Cirripectes indrambaryae* Smith, 1934
- *Salarias cruentipinnis* Day, 1888
- *Salarias filamentosus* Alleyne & MacLeay, 1877

## Range

Eritrea, Kenya, Madagascar, Republic of Mauritius, Seychelles

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