Saltwater Fish · Shrimp
Skunk Cleaner Shrimp
Lysmata amboinensis
Runs the reef's cleaning station, and knows itIntermediate
- Lifespan
- 3-5 years
- Size
- 2-2.4 in5-6 cm
- Social needs
- Singly or as a pair
- Time
- Minimal beyond reef upkeep
- Cost
- Medium
- Diet
- Scavenger (frozen foods, pellets, fish parasites)
Overview
What is this animal?
- The skunk cleaner shrimp is the white-striped, antennae-waving shrimp of nature documentaries, famous for picking parasites and dead tissue from fish at cleaning stations.
- In aquariums it does the same, with fish queueing and even opening their gills for service.
- It is peaceful, reef-safe, and genuinely useful, but it is an invertebrate, and inverts play by stricter water-chemistry rules than fish.
Temperament
- Completely peaceful and impressively bold, a settled cleaner shrimp rides hands during tank maintenance and inspects anything new.
- The cleaning interactions with fish are mesmerising and genuinely beneficial.
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- It coexists with corals, snails, most other ornamental shrimp and almost all reef fish.
- Keep it away from the coral banded shrimp (Stenopus hispidus), which can attack and kill other shrimp, and remove any hitchhiking mantis shrimp, which will hunt it.
- Predatory exceptions (hawkfish, large wrasses, triggers, puffers) see it as lunch, so check the stocking list both ways.
A good fit for
- Reef keepers wanting visible, useful invertebrates
- Tanks with occasional fish-parasite pressure
- Aquarists who enjoy interactive animals
- Established systems with stable parameters
Common mistakes to avoid
- Fast acclimation, the classic first-day killer
- Copper medications anywhere in the system
- Housing with hawkfish, triggers, or puffers
- Salinity swings from careless top-offs
Enclosure
Minimum 30 gallons114 litres
Fine alone or with company. Singly or as a pair
- Provide a stable, mature reef of 30 gallons114 litres or more, and larger if you can, with rockwork ledges and overhangs where the shrimp sets up shop.
- Singles and pairs both work; skunk cleaners are simultaneous hermaphrodites, so any two adults form a pair.
- Keep salinity rock-steady at 1.024-1.026 and temperature at 75-79°F24-26°C.
- Sudden salinity or pH swings, including sloppy top-offs, are the main killer of healthy specimens.
Supplies
Setup
- Tank, stand and sump
- Return pump and powerheads
- Protein skimmer
- Reef lighting
- Rock and sand
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- Salt mix, refractometer and test kits
- Quarantine tank
Ongoing
- Sinking marine pellets
- Frozen mysis shrimp
- Frozen chopped seafood blend
- Feeding tongs
- Turkey baster for target-feeding
- Small thawing cup and strainer
Safe substrate: Aragonite sand · Dry or cured live rock
Care routine
Daily
- Check salinity, temperature and flow
- Head-count and look everyone over
- Top up evaporation with fresh water
Every few days
- Service the skimmer and filter socksevery 3 days
- Target-feed the shrimpevery 3 days
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Weekly
- Check for moults
- Clean the glass
- Test the water
- Water change
Monthly
- Calibrate the refractometer
- Check labels for copper
- Check salt, RO/DI and reagents
Less often
- Deep-clean pumps and powerheadsevery 3 months
- Replace RO/DI filter mediaevery 6 months
Health review: Quarterly moult and stability review, every 3 months
Tools
Care in depth
Diet
Scavenger (frozen foods, pellets, fish parasites)
- Cleaning service plus scavenging covers part of the menu, but feed directly: sinking pellets, frozen mysis, and bits of meaty seafood.
- A fed cleaner is a bold cleaner.
- Expect shameless theft of food intended for corals and fish; many keepers feed the shrimp first so target-fed corals stand a chance.
Health
Signs of good health, and the common problems
- Acclimation is the make-or-break moment: drip-acclimate over at least an hour, because osmotic shock from quick transfers kills more cleaner shrimp than anything else.
- Never expose them to copper-based medications.
- Regular moulting is normal: a perfect, ghostly shell on the sand and a hiding shrimp for a day or two.
- Failed moults usually point to unstable salinity or other swinging parameters.
- Low iodine is often blamed, but the evidence is thin and an overdose harms invertebrates, so never dose iodine without testing; steady reef-standard maintenance and regular water changes prevent most failed moults.
Is this urgent?
6 warning signs and how fast to act, 3 of them right away
In a reef, stability matters more than any single target number. A parameter moving fast does more damage than a parameter sitting slightly off.
Go now
Any detectable ammonia or nitriteWater change now with matched, mixed and aerated saltwater. Stop feeding. Ammonia is directly toxic, and at reef pH more of it is in the toxic form, so a marine system has less margin than a freshwater one. Nitrite is far less toxic in seawater, but any reading in a stocked tank means the biological filter is not keeping up.
NowTemperature or salinity has moved sharplyCorrect slowly, over hours, not minutes. Check the heater and the top-off. The speed of the change does the damage. Correcting fast repeats the injury in the other direction.
NowRapid gilling, or a fish hanging in the flow breathing hardIncrease aeration and check temperature and salinity. Warm water holds less oxygen, and a heater failure shows up here first.
NowToday
White spots, or a fine dusting like icing sugarIdentify which parasite before treating. Most reef tanks cannot be treated in place. The two common parasites look similar and need different handling; velvet can kill a tank in days.
TodayCorals closed for more than a day, or receding tissueTest alkalinity first, and compare it against the last reading rather than a target. Unstable alkalinity is the most commonly cited coral killer, and a swing shows up in the trend, never in a single point.
TodayA new fish added without quarantine now looks unwellRemove it to a separate system today if you can. Nearly every wipeout in a reef tank traces back to a skipped quarantine.
TodayQuarantine every new animal, including corals and inverts. It is the single practice that separates a reef that lasts from a reef that restarts.
This is general guidance for a healthy adult, not a diagnosis. An exotics vet who knows your animal always overrides it, and the time to find one is before you need one.
Bedding and substrate
2 safe, 3 with a caveat, 2 to avoid
In a marine system the rock and the sand are life support, and how you start them decides the first six months.
Safe
Aragonite sandThe standard marine substrate, and it hosts the biology. It does not meaningfully hold pH or alkalinity at normal reef pH, so test and dose for those regardless.
safeDry or cured live rockDry rock avoids importing pests but takes longer to mature. Cured rock is faster and riskier.
safeWith a caveat
Deep sand bedsPowerful nutrient processing when they work and a sulphide release when they are disturbed. Choose shallow or deep deliberately, not by accident. A sand-sifting or burrowing goby needs a fine bed about 2 to 3 in5 to 8 cm deep that it turns over itself. That is a different thing from a denitrifying deep sand bed (4 in10 cm or more, left undisturbed), and the two do not mix: a sifting goby disturbs the layers a deep sand bed depends on and eats the life in it.
with a caveatUncured live rockIt will cycle the tank for you, and it will also bring in whatever was living in it.
with a caveatBare bottomWorkable in high-flow systems for fish that neither sift nor burrow, but it removes a large part of the biological buffer. Wrong for watchman gobies and other gobies that burrow or sift, which need a fine sand bed at least 2 in5 cm deep to dig and feed in, and for mandarins and other copepod-eaters, which need sand as well as mature rock for their food to breed in.
with a caveatNever
Silica play sandNot the marine standard, and commonly blamed for feeding diatom blooms in a new tank.
neverAny rock or decor of unknown originMetals and phosphate leach for months and are almost impossible to trace once the tank is running.
neverThis is our general list for saltwater fish. We have not built one specific to Shrimp yet.
Top resources for more info
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Same axes, same care guides: the honest way to choose between types.
