Barber goby

Temperature

72–79°F

22–26°C

pH

8.1–8.4

Adult size

1.6 in

4 cm

Minimum tank

11 gal

40 L

Temperament

Peaceful

Social behavior

Social

Swim level

Bottom

Difficulty

Easy

Breeding

Medium

Rarity

Common

Reef safe

Reef safe

Family

Gobiidae

Origin

Southwestern Atlantic, coastal Brazil

Cleaner shrimp, cleaner gobies and their clients

A cleaner holds a station on the reef and advertises it: cleaner shrimp wave their long white antennae and rock from side to side, cleaner wrasses swim a bobbing dance. Fish arrive and pose, head up or head down with fins spread, and hold still while the cleaner picks off parasitic isopods, dead skin and loose scales, working into the mouth and under the gill covers of fish that could swallow it in one bite. The client leaves with fewer parasites and the cleaner eats a meal it never had to hunt. Reef fish queue for it, and a busy station is visited hundreds of times a day.

The skunk cleaner shrimp is the one that does this reliably in an aquarium: it sets up on a rock ledge, and tank fish, tangs and wrasses especially, learn to stop by within days. The fire shrimp cleans too but hides more and works at dusk. Pederson's cleaner shrimp does the same job from the tentacles of its anemone. The neon goby and its relatives are small, hardy cleaners for tanks that cannot take a shrimp. The cleaner wrasses are the difficult ones: many never take prepared food, and both are marked difficult here. None of them will cure an outbreak of ich; they pick off some parasites and keep a healthy fish tidier, and that is the honest claim. Keep every cleaner away from predators such as large hawkfish, triggers, lionfish and big wrasses.