The brownstriped grunt has a deep and compressed body with a blunt head with the mouth positioned low.

The head is dark brown with a large vertical whitish area on the gill cover.

It occurs from the Caribbean coast of southern Costa Rica to Santa Marta in Colombia, from Curaçao to the Gulf of Paria off Venezuela and off northeastern Brazil where it is found from Sao Luis to Espírito Santo.

[1] The brownstriped grunt is found on shallow rocky reefs in coastal waters, preferring turbid continental coasts rather than islands.

[5] The brownstriped grunt was first formally described in 1842 as Haemulon moricandi by the Italian catholic priest and naturalist Camillo Ranzani (1775–1841) with the type locality given as Brazilian seas.