The colour is brownish-green on the upper parts, silver-speckled and blotched on the sides, very pale below, and the fin membranes are transparent.

[8] It has a limited distribution in acidic pools of water in heathland peat flats of southwest Australia, between the Blackwood and Kent Rivers.

These small and shallow pools may contain a population of around 150 individuals, are generally no larger than 600 square metres, and evaporate in the dry seasons.

It is also unusual for its ability to survive desiccation by burrowing into sand, a process of aestivation, when the pools it lives in periodically evaporate.

[9] This placement has been also challenged, and rightly so, as analyses of molecular data have shown that Lepidogalaxias is actually an old and isolated lineage basal to all other Euteleostei.

[11][12] The species is contained in the class Actinopterygii, ray-finned fish, and is sometimes given the taxonomic placements as Galaxiidae of the order Salmoniformes.