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.
Housing
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.
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.
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.
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. Directly toxic, and a marine system has less margin than a freshwater one.
Now
Temperature 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.
Now
Rapid 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.
Now
Today
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.
Today
Corals 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.
Today
A 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.
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.
Intermediate
Intermediate
Intermediate
Intermediate
Intermediate
Intermediate