White-Spot Anemone Shrimp

Care at a glance

Overview

Reef safe and genuinely commensal. It doesn't damage its host anemone or bother coral and fish, instead picking up detritus and leftover food around its host and occasionally cleaning parasites off passing fish. Usually sold and kept as a bonded pair on a single host anemone. Peaceful with everything in the tank. The real catch is the host: a healthy Stichodactyla or Heteractis anemone is a demanding animal in its own right, needing strong lighting, stable water, and regular feeding, so success with this shrimp comes down to success with its anemone first.

In the wild

Found throughout the Indo-Pacific, from East Africa and the Red Sea through the Indian Ocean to Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Lives among the tentacles of large carpet and sand anemones, mainly Stichodactyla and Heteractis species, and occasionally on other anemones, corals, or sea cucumbers. In the aquarium it needs a compatible host anemone to feel secure, though it can survive without one.

Good to know

A small, glassy translucent shrimp marked with white spots ringed in yellow or orange on its tail fan, which is where both the white-spot and peacock-tail names come from. Like other Periclimenes anemone shrimp, it's protected from its host's stinging cells by a mucus coating it picks up from the anemone itself, which lets it live safely among tentacles that would sting an unprotected animal.

Did you know

A pair will often share one host anemone with an entirely different symbiotic species, like a clownfish, with both trading protection and cleanup duties in the same few square inches of tentacle.

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