Crustaceans · Lysmatidae
Scarlet skunk cleaner shrimp
Cleaner shrimp of the Red Sea and the Indo-Pacific: a white stripe along the back, edged by two red bands, on an amber body. It runs cleaning stations where fish come to have parasites and dead tissue removed.
What it needs
Related species
Lysmata debelius
Range recommended by the sheet
Day to day
Acclimation: like all shrimp, it copes badly with sudden changes in temperature, pH or other water parameters. Drip-acclimate it for about one hour.
Setup: provide live rock with caves and overhangs, as in its natural habitat.
Tankmates: it is peaceful with fish and corals. In captivity, however, it often behaves as a monogamous, aggressive pair: in a group of more than two, one pair may kill the others. Keep it alone or as a pair. Hawkfish, lionfish and predatory shrimp or crabs may eat it.
Sensitivities: like other invertebrates, it does not tolerate copper treatments or high nitrate. Keep iodine at a correct level so that moults go well. After a moult the shell stays soft for a while and it hides, because predators, and sometimes its own kind, may attack it.
Good to know: its cleaning can reduce the number of white spot parasites on a fish, but it does not cure an infestation. Water: aim for 22 to 25.5 °C, a specific gravity of 1.023 to 1.025, pH 8.1 to 8.4 and 8 to 12 dKH.
In the wild it gets much of its food from the parasites and dead tissue it picks off fish; it is considered omnivorous.
In the aquarium, supplement with freeze-dried, frozen and flake foods. None of the sources consulted gives a feeding frequency.
Tank mates
In detail
Identification: adults are about 5 to 6 cm long with two pairs of long white antennae. The body and legs are pale amber; the carapace has a central white band between two wider red bands, and the red tail carries symmetrical white spots. Lysmata grabhami, from the Atlantic, looks very similar and can only be told apart by the tail pattern. The English name scarlet cleaner shrimp is sometimes also used for Lysmata debelius.
In the wild it lives on coral reefs, in caves and under ledges, usually in pairs. It advertises its services to fish by rocking from side to side, and it often shares caves with clients such as moray eels. In captivity it removes parasites mostly at night, and its cleaning also helps fish wounds heal. Its eyesight is coarse and it is probably colour-blind.
Reproduction: every individual starts as a male and becomes a functional hermaphrodite after a few moults; there is no pure female. Partners moult in turn and mate just after a moult, each taking the female role in turn. A spawn holds 200 to 500 greenish eggs, carried under the abdomen, which hatch at dusk. The larvae spend 5 to 6 months in the plankton through 14 stages: rearing is difficult and most larvae die, so most shrimp in the trade are wild-caught.
Status: not evaluated by the IUCN and not listed by CITES. There is no evidence so far of an effect of collection on reefs.
Status
Not evaluated (NE)
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Where this comes from
Lysmata wurdemanni
Lysmata debelius
Lysmata wurdemanni
Calcinus laevimanus
Hymenocera picta
Neopetrolisthes maculatus
Stenopus hispidus
Alpheus randalli
Ancylomenes pedersoni
