Skunk Cleaner Shrimp
Lysmata amboinensis
Runs the reef's cleaning station — and knows itIntermediate
- Lifespan
- 3-5 years
- Size
- 5-6cm
- 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.
- It coexists with corals, snails, other shrimp species, and almost all reef fish.
- 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 75 litres (20 US gallons)
Fine alone or with company. Singly or as a pair
- Provide a stable, mature reef of 75 litres (20 gallons) or more 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 24-26C.
- 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
- 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
- Iodine or trace-element supplement to support moulting
- Small thawing cup and strainer
Safe substrate: Aragonite sand · Dry or cured live rock · Bare bottom
Care routine
Daily
- Check salinity, temperature and flow
- Feed
- Head-count and look everyone over
- Top up evaporation with fresh water
Weekly
- Service the skimmer and filter socksevery 3 days
- Check for moults
- Clean the glass
- Test the water
Monthly
- Water changeevery 2 weeks
- 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
Vet: Quarterly moult and stability review — every 3 months
Top resources for more info
Independent creators and organisations we would send a friend to. We have no affiliation with any of them, and nothing here is sponsored. Links checked 2026-09-19.
YouTubers
Sites
Go deeper
Diet
- 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
- 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 point to unstable parameters or iodine-poor water; steady reef-standard maintenance prevents them.
Is your enclosure big enough?
Is this urgent?
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
Today
Quarantine 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.
What it really costs
Setup, monthly, first year and across a whole life, itemised and with the electricity worked out from the actual wattage. Published figures for the same animal disagree by a factor of four, so the calculator shows ranges rather than picking one.
Bedding and substrate
In a marine system the rock and the sand are life support, and how you start them decides the first six months.
Safe
With a caveat
Never
This is our general list for saltwater fish. We have not built one specific to Shrimp yet.
My kit says 0.25 ppm. Is that dangerous?
A liquid kit measures total ammonia, but only the un-ionised fraction is really toxic, and that fraction is governed by pH and temperature — each whole pH unit multiplies it roughly tenfold. So the same reading can be nearly harmless in one tank and lethal in another; this works out which one you are in.
Compare with other animals
The same axes for every animal, side by side — the way the guides are written makes that a fair comparison rather than two articles.
Shrimp, side by side
Same axes, same care guides — the honest way to choose between types.
See all Shrimp side by side →
