TankBud

Bluestreak cleaner wrasse

Labroides dimidiatus

Also known as Cleaner Wrasse, Common Cleaner Wrasse, Bluestreak Cleaner Fish

SaltwaterFish

Bluestreak cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus)
Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

Care at a glance

Temperature
75–81°F
24–27°C
pH
8.1–8.4
Adult size
4.3 in
11 cm
Minimum tank
106 gal
400 L
Temperament
Peaceful
Social behavior
Social
Tankmates
With caution
Swim level
Middle
Difficulty
Difficult
Breeding
Hard
Rarity
Common
Reef safe
Reef safe
Family
Labridae
Origin
Indo-Pacific and Red Sea

Overview

Very peaceful and tolerated even by aggressive fish because it is recognized as a cleaner. It is completely reef safe with corals and inverts. The problem is diet: it is specialized on parasites and fish mucus, has a high metabolism, and frequently refuses prepared food, so it has a poor survival record in captivity and often slowly starves. Best left on the reef unless you have a very large, heavily stocked mature system and a specimen already eating frozen food. Not a beginner fish.

In the wild

Ranges from East Africa and the Red Sea to French Polynesia on coral reefs, where it sets up cleaning stations that other fish visit to have parasites and dead tissue picked off. It needs an established reef with a lot of live rock and, critically, a large well-stocked fish community that gives it something to clean.

Good to know

A Labridae cleaner wrasse in the genus Labroides. It lives in a mutualistic relationship, eating ectoparasites, mucus, dead scales and dead tissue off other fish, and its cleaning behavior gives real health benefits to reef fish populations. It is a protogynous hermaphrodite that lives in harems where a dominant male controls a group of females.

Did you know

It performs a bobbing dance to advertise its cleaning services and is trusted enough to swim inside the mouths and gills of predators many times its size, safely picking off parasites without being eaten.

Symbiotic relationships

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.

Every symbiotic relationship in the catalog

Common questions

What size tank does a Bluestreak cleaner wrasse need?

A Bluestreak cleaner wrasse needs at least 106 gal (400 L). It spends most of its time in the middle.

What temperature and pH does a Bluestreak cleaner wrasse need?

A Bluestreak cleaner wrasse is comfortable at 75–81°F (24–27°C) with a pH of 8.1–8.4.

How big does a Bluestreak cleaner wrasse get?

An adult Bluestreak cleaner wrasse reaches about 4.3 in (11 cm).

Related species