A poorly-described marine planktonic ciliate, Tintinnopsis brasiliensis Kofoid & Campbell, 1929, collected from the Taiping Cape of Qingdao, China, was morphologically investigated based on permanent preparation after protargol impregnation and was compared with other related congeners. According to the infraciliature, three ciliary groups can be recognized, which reveals a very stable structure among specimens and denotes that the pattern of infraciliature is, apart from the features of the lorica, a highly reliable criterion for species identification.