The brightly coloured cleaner shrimp is the perfect creature in nearly any aquarium – they help with the natural filtration process, break down debris, and help clean their tank mates, coral and rocks. We’re celebrating these wonderful little helpers at the Aquarium as part of our Weird, Wild and Wonderful school holiday programme, along with a huge variety of other fascinating creatures kids can interact with until 17 July.
According to Aquatic Community, the cleaner shrimp is commonly found in the Indo-Pacific region and the Red Sea, preferring rock or reef cover to avoid becoming a light snack for predators. They establish cleaner stations and clean debris and parasites off fish and other sea creatures.
The website remarks how amazing it is to see, for example, how a turtle is cleaned by another cleaner fish, which is cleaned in turn by a cleaner shrimp. They will actually climb inside the mouth of bigger fish and eels to clean away parasites and bacteria.
Images viewed on Google also show how the cleaner shrimp will crawl into the open mouth of willing divers to give them a quick clean!
Breeding these shrimp in captivity is relatively hard, and care has to be taken to ensure the young survive. When paired, the shrimp will retreat under cover to breed.
The eggs are carried until ready to hatch and, when they do, this is where most people run into trouble – the small size of the shrimp and the difficulty of feeding the hatchlings often lead to a high mortality rate.
