Photo by Juan Miguel Artigas Azas . Photo by Juan Miguel Artigas Azas . Photo by Juan Miguel Artigas Azas . Photo by Juan Miguel Artigas Azas . The overall shape of the fish is elongated with a compressed body, a slightly curved profile with a concavity above the eye and a slightly exposed almost straight pre-maxillar pedicel.
Large males develop gibbosities in the frontal area when breeding.
Other features are thick lips and a lower jaw a little bit longer than the upper one. Dorsal and anal fins with filaments that extend beyond the middle of the rounded caudal fin, in some cases the dorsal filament beyond the end of it. Basic color base is yellowish, lighter in the lower half of the body and much darker to brown in the upper one, the lower part also with a lot of red. Every scale on the flanks show a blue spot larger than those in the ventral area. The head of the fish is dark green in the dorsal area and yellow with an intense green hue in the ventral one.