Banded Coral Shrimp
Stenopus hispidus
Spotted cleaner shrimp
Periclimenes yucatanicus
About
The spotted cleaner shrimp is a small, brightly marked shrimp that lives among the stinging tentacles of sea anemones, where it sets up a cleaning station for passing reef fish.
- Length
- 2.5 cm
- Depth
- up to 13 m
How to tell it apart
Several small shrimp share anemones with reef fish and offer the same cleaning service. This one stands out by its clear body marked with brown-and-white saddle patches and its black-banded white antennae.
Appearance
It grows to about 2.5 cm long and has a clear body patterned with brown and white saddle-shaped markings. Its claws and legs are boldly striped in red, purple, and white, and it carries two pairs of long, white antennae banded in black.
Habitat
It lives in the Caribbean Sea, sheltering among the tentacles of sea anemones on shallow reefs down to about 13 m.
Behaviour
This shrimp sways its body and waves its antennae to catch the attention of fish swimming by. When a fish stops and poses nearby, the shrimp comes out from the anemone's tentacles and picks off dead skin and parasites, sometimes even reaching inside the fish's mouth and gill covers to clean them.
Did you know?
It will crawl right into the mouth of a fish and clean behind its gill covers, and the fish lets it work without trying to eat it.
Log it in Into the Blue
Describe what you saw and we name it, then keep every species you find in your Oceandex.
