Paraploactis

Paraploactis velvetfishes have a dense covering of prickles on the head and body, these prickles being modified scales, the largest scales are to the rear of the head above the lateral line. The head has an elaborate sculpture of ridges and blunt spines, in some species there is a fleshy pad on the throat. The frontal bone has two obvious ridges that diverge to the rear, creating a pear-shaped depression separating them. The origin of the dorsal fin lies over the centre to the rear of the eye. The dorsal fin has a deep not between the third and fourth spines and the front 4 spines are almost a separate fin. The spines in the dorsal and anal fins are frequently rather flexible and closely resemble the soft rays of those fins. The fin rays are all simple, i.e. they do not have branches. The dorsal fin has 13-15 spines and 8-10 soft rays while the anal fin typically has a single spine, although there are sometimes 2, and 7-10 soft rays. There are 13-14, normally 14, unbranched fin rays in the pectoral fins and the pelvic-fin has a single spine and 3 soft rays. The lateral line scales are in the form of obvious knobs. especially near the head and there are 11-15 such scales in the line. The jaws have tiny villiform teeth, no teeth on the palatine and the vomerine may have very small teeth or they are absent too.^[10] These are small fishes which have a maximum known total length of 12 cm (4.7 in).^[9]

Paraploactis velvetfishes are found in the eastern Indian Ocean as far west as Sri Lanka and the western Pacific Ocean.^[9]