---
title: Jewelled Blenny (Salarias fasciatus)
scientific_name: Salarias fasciatus
common_name: Jewelled Blenny
taxon: Combtooth blenny
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-19T13:02:55.712Z
updated: 2026-08-14T11:36:02.114Z
tags: Jewelled Blenny, Salarias fasciatus, Combtooth blenny, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/combtooth-blenny/jewelled-blenny
---

# Jewelled Blenny (*Salarias fasciatus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Combtooth blenny (*Blenniidae*)
- **Size:** up to 14 cm
- **Depth:** 0-8 m
- **Diet:** Herbivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Shallow reef flats, rubble and seagrass edges
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Gonochoric
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- stout blenny densely marbled in brown, gray and white, like lichen
- branched tentacles over the eyes and on the nape
- perches openly on rock and rubble, propped on pelvic fins
- length up to 14 cm

A blenny patterned like lichen, sitting in the open on a rock and moving only when it has to. Fourteen centimeters (5.5 in), and one of the most successful algae specialists on the flat.

It eats by scraping. The teeth are fine, numerous and comb-like, and it drags them over rock to take the film of algae and detritus - hundreds of quick bites an hour, all day, which is what a diet of nearly pure plant matter requires.

That appetite made it famous in the aquarium trade as the fish that clears a tank of algae. It also made it a problem, because a tank that has been cleared has nothing left to feed it, and the blenny starves in a spotless aquarium. The reef version never runs out.

The tentacles over the eyes and on the nape break its outline against textured rock, and the marbling does the rest. It relies on being unremarkable rather than on being fast, and it works.

## Also known as

- **English:** jewelled blenny, Banded Jewelled Blenny, Banded Blenny
- **French:** Blennie rayée
- **Italian:** Bavosa fasciata
- **German:** Gestreifter Felsenspringer, Juwelen-Felshüpfer, Juwelen-Kammzähner
- **Portuguese:** Blênio-marmoreado
- **Czech:** slizoun pruhovaný
- **Japanese:** ヤエヤマギンポ, Yaeyamagimpo
- **Chinese:** 細紋唇齒鳚
- **Russian:** Многополосая салария
- **DA:** Hugofisk
- **MAH:** Jibalan
- **MAL:** Mandian, മണ്ടിന്, മണ്ടിയന്
- **TH:** ปลาตั๊กแตนหินหน้าผี

## Scientific synonyms

- *Blennius fasciatus* Bloch, 1786
- *Salarias fascitus* (Bloch, 1786)
- *Salarias quadripennis* Cuvier, 1816

## Range

East Africa, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Red Sea, Seychelles

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