The silver sweep has deep and strongly compressed body with a thin caudal peduncle.

The head is moderately sized with an almost straight dorsal profile, a short snout and quite large eyes.

[1] Silver sweeps are greyish, blue-grey or green-grey dorsally and silver-grey ventrally, with the edge of the gill cover and the base of the pectoral fin being blackish.

[5] Adult silver sweeps are found on coastal reefs at depths down to at least 50 metres (160 ft),[4][6] It feeds on plankton over rock reefs where it forms schools while juveniles settle in tide pools and can be found in the brackish waters of estuaries.

[7] The silver sweep was first formally described by the Austrian ichthyologist Rudolf Kner in 1865 with the type locality given as Sydney in New South Wales.

[8] The silver sweep is of secondary importance as a target for commercial fisheries and is caught using purse seines and trap nets.