The belted sandfish has a laterally compressed elongate body with a relatively short, pointed snout.

A dark stripe runs through the eye and reaches back to anterior part of the body.

[3] The belted sandfish attains a maximum recorded total length of 10 centimetres (3.9 in).

Its range extends north as far as North Carolina and from there it is found south along the eastern coast of the United States and into the Gulf of Mexico, where its range extends from northwestern Cuba and the Florida Keys north and west along the Gulf coast to the border between the United States and Mexico and along the coast of Mexico from Veracruz and Madagascar Reef on the Campeche Banks, and in the Caribbean Sea along the southern coast of Cuba.

[4] The belted sandfish is a synchronous hermaphrodite, i.e. the fish have both male and female functional gonads and self fertilisation is, at least, theoretically possible.

[1] The belted sandfish was first formally described as Centropristis subligarius in 1870 by the American paleontologist and zoologist Edward Drinker Cope (1840-1897) with the type locality given as Pensacola in Florida.