---
title: Minute Triplefin (Enneapterygius pusillus)
scientific_name: Enneapterygius pusillus
common_name: Minute Triplefin
taxon: Threefin blenny
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-15T20:50:09.319Z
updated: 2026-08-18T09:22:27.043Z
tags: Minute Triplefin, Enneapterygius pusillus, Threefin blenny, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/threefin-blenny/minute-triplefin
---

# Minute Triplefin (*Enneapterygius pusillus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Threefin blenny (*Tripterygiidae*)
- **Size:** 3 cm
- **Depth:** 3-20 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Coral and rubble on reef slopes
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- three separate dorsal fins, the first two short and the third long
- pale body with reddish to brown bars
- high first dorsal crest in males
- up to 3 cm

Eduard Ruppell described this fish in 1835, and the reason his name keeps appearing on Red Sea species is that he was the first naturalist to work this coast systematically.

He was a Frankfurt merchant's son who spent the 1820s and 1830s traveling in Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia and along both shores of this sea, collecting everything, at a time when the trip itself was the dangerous part. He brought back thousands of specimens, described hundreds of species new to science, and funded most of it himself. A large fraction of the fish, corals and molluscs on this site carry either his name as author or a species named after him, and several of the animals in this catalogue were first written down from material he shipped to Frankfurt.

The fish is three centimeters long and lives on coral and rubble between three and twenty meters, which gives some sense of how thorough the collecting was.

Like all triplefins it perches rather than swims, and the three separate dorsal fins along the back are what separate the family from the blennies at a glance.

## Also known as

- **English:** Highcrest Triplefin

## Scientific synonyms

- *Helcogramma pusillus* (Rüppell, 1835)
- *Tripterygium pusillum* (Rüppell, 1835)

## Range

South Africa

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/threefin-blenny/minute-triplefin)*
*Updated: August 18, 2026*