The bluecheek butterflyfish has a bright yellow body marked with thin vertical red lines.

[2] The bluecheek butterflyfish is found in the north-western Indian Ocean where it occurs in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, as far east as the coast of Oman.

They have been known to occasionally hover in a stationary position for long periods beneath ledges of plate corals of the genus Acropora.

[1] The bluecheek butterflyfish was first formally described in 1831 by the French anatomist Georges Cuvier with the type locality given as the Red Sea at Massawa, Eritrea and Al-Luhayya, Yemen.

[6] It belongs to the large subgenus Rabdophorus which might warrant recognition as a distinct genus.