Skunk Cleaner Shrimp

Water & care

Hardy once settled, but like all shrimp it does not tolerate copper or other invertebrate-toxic medications, sudden salinity or pH swings, or high nitrate. Drip-acclimate slowly (an hour or more). It needs a mature tank with caves where it can hide while molting; it molts every few weeks and the empty shell left behind is normal. LiveAquaria recommends iodine and trace-element supplements for molting, but the benefit is anecdotal; keep calcium, alkalinity and magnesium at normal reef levels and do regular water changes.

Temperature, specific gravity, pH and dKH are LiveAquaria's care ranges. Keep salinity very stable; shrimp handle slow drift far better than sudden change. Nitrate: retailers warn that shrimp do not tolerate high nitrate; under 20 ppm is the usual invertebrate guideline. Calcium, magnesium and phosphate are not species-specific, so they are left blank: keep normal reef levels. Ammonia and nitrite must be zero, and copper must be absent.

Feeding

DietOmnivore

Favorite foods

• Mysis shrimp
• Frozen brine shrimp
• Flake and pellet foods
• Parasites and dead tissue picked from fish

Scavenges leftover fish food and will take freeze-dried, frozen and flake foods (LiveAquaria). In a well-fed community tank it often finds enough, but a small piece of mysis or a pellet a few times a week keeps it from going hungry, especially in very clean or lightly stocked tanks. Do not count on fish parasites as its food.

Tank & maintenance

Minimum tank

30 gallons

Aquascape

Mature live rock with caves and overhangs; it will claim one as a cleaning station. Provide hiding places for molting.

Lighting

No special needs; any reef or fish-only lighting.

Water flow

Low to moderate; it tolerates normal reef flow.

Routine upkeep

Standard reef upkeep: regular partial water changes, daily top-off with fresh RO/DI water (ideally an auto top-off) to keep salinity steady, and removal of uneaten food. Leave molted shells alone. Never dose copper, most antiparasitic drugs or invertebrate-toxic pest treatments in the display; treat fish in a separate quarantine tank.

Temperament & tankmates

Help it thrive

• Drip-acclimate for at least an hour and match salinity closely; most losses happen in the first days after a salinity or pH shock.
• Give it a cave or overhang near the front of the tank; it will set up a cleaning station there and become a showpiece.
• Keep a pair if your tank allows: any two adults can mate, and you will often see eggs carried under the tail.
• Offer small meaty foods a few times a week instead of relying on scraps.
• Do not rely on a cleaner shrimp to cure marine ich or velvet; quarantine new fish, because the medicines that treat those diseases kill shrimp.

Common ailments

This is general hobby guidance, not veterinary advice. Quarantine new arrivals and treat in a separate tank whenever you can.

Risks of owning one

• It will be eaten by hawkfish, lionfish, triggerfish, pufferfish and large wrasses.
• Once you keep shrimp, copper and most antiparasitic medicines cannot be used in the display tank; you need a separate quarantine or hospital tank for fish.
• Very sensitive to salinity swings from evaporation or careless water changes.
• It is not a substitute for quarantine: it may pick at parasites but cannot be relied on to clear an ich or velvet outbreak.
• Practically all specimens are wild-collected, so each purchase draws on reef populations.

Breeding

DifficultyVery hard Captive-bredRare or wild-caught

Spawning is easy: any two adults can mate, and pairs carry eggs in home aquariums regularly, hatching larvae at night. Raising the larvae is the hard part. They drift in the plankton for about 58-140 days in culture, molting repeatedly, often without developing ("mark-time" molting), and losses are heavy. Research groups have reared them on Artemia nauplii, enriched Artemia and pellet diets, but aquaculture has been called problematic because of this long larval phase, and captive-bred skunk cleaners are not a regular trade item.

1. Keep a healthy pair well fed on varied meaty foods; eggs appear under the tail soon after a molt.
2. As the eggs near hatching they change color and tiny eyes become visible; hatching happens around dusk or at night.
3. Collect the newly hatched larvae (they are attracted to a light) into a separate larval tank with gentle, non-turbulent circulation, such as a kreisel-type tank.
4. Feed rotifers and newly hatched Artemia nauplii at first, moving to enriched Artemia metanauplii and fine pellet larval diets as they grow.
5. Maintain very clean water with daily partial water changes and stable temperature and salinity for two to five months.
6. Move settled post-larvae, which look like tiny transparent shrimp walking on surfaces, to a grow-out tank with small rubble for cover.

In the aquarium vs in the wild

History

Described by the Dutch zoologist J. G. De Man in 1888, in his report on decapods collected by Dr. J. Brock in the Indonesian archipelago, originally as a variety of another species (Hippolysmata vittata var. amboinensis); the name refers to Ambon (Amboina). It later stood as Hippolysmata amboinensis until Chace (1972) merged Hippolysmata into Lysmata. Bright Lysmata shrimps have long been kept for their beauty and are among the most intensively traded decapods in the aquarium industry (Rhyne & Lin 2006). Hermaphroditism in Lysmata was reported in the 1980s (including a 1983 thesis by Bundy on peppermint shrimp), and formal studies in 1998 confirmed the protandric simultaneous hermaphrodite system. More recently, lab studies (2015 onward) have tested cleaner shrimps, including this one, as natural parasite control for farmed and aquarium fish.

Evolution & relatives

Lysmata is a genus of caridean shrimps (Caridea) in the superfamily Alpheoidea, the same superfamily as snapping shrimps and the thorid shrimps such as the Sexy Shrimp. Molecular studies (Fiedler et al. 2010; Baeza et al. 2009) found that simultaneous hermaphroditism is widespread across Lysmata and probably evolved before the genus diversified, while well-developed cleaning behavior evolved only once, in a derived "cleaner clade" that probably comprises L. amboinensis, L. debelius and L. grabhami. Most other Lysmata, including the peppermint shrimps, are group-living. Like the peppermint shrimps (the old genus Hippolysmata), the cleaners lack the developed accessory branch on the antennule that marks the 'historic' Lysmata species (Rhyne & Lin 2006). L. amboinensis and the Atlantic L. grabhami are usually treated as sister species: two near-identical cleaners, one in the Indo-Pacific and one in the Atlantic.

Family tree, from kingdom down

1. Kingdom Animalia Animals Animals are living things made of many cells that must eat food to live. Fish, corals, crabs, snails and sea stars are all animals.
2. Phylum Arthropoda Arthropods Arthropods have jointed legs and a hard outer shell called an exoskeleton. To grow, they must crawl out of the old shell, which is called molting.
3. Subphylum Crustacea Crustaceans Crustaceans are arthropods with a hard shell and two pairs of feelers. Most live in water, like crabs, shrimps and lobsters.
4. Superclass Multicrustacea
5. Class Malacostraca Malacostracans This big class of crustaceans includes crabs, shrimps, lobsters and krill. Their bodies are built from about the same number of segments.
6. Subclass Eumalacostraca
7. Superorder Eucarida
8. Order Decapoda Decapods Decapod means 'ten feet'. Crabs, shrimps, lobsters and hermit crabs all have ten legs, counting their claws.
9. Suborder Pleocyemata Egg-carrying decapods
10. Infraorder Caridea caridean shrimps
11. Superfamily Alpheoidea Snapping, cleaner and anemone shrimps
12. Family Lysmatidae Cleaner and peppermint shrimps These shrimps often have long white feelers. Some clean other fish, and others eat pest anemones in aquariums.
13. Genus Lysmata Cleaner shrimps Lysmata shrimps include cleaner, fire and peppermint shrimps. Many start life as males and later become male and female at once.
14. Species Lysmata amboinensis

See it on the Tree of Life Compare with another species

Closest relatives

• Lysmata grabhami Red-backed Cleaner Shrimp Sister species; its Atlantic counterpart in the cleaner clade
• Lysmata debelius Blood Red Fire Shrimp Same genus; fellow member of the pair-living cleaner clade Read guide · Compare
• Lysmata splendida (no common name) Same genus; Maldivian cleaner shrimp of the L. debelius group
• Lysmata wurdemanni Peppermint Shrimp Same genus; belongs to the group-living peppermint shrimp clade Read guide · Compare
• Lysmata vittata Indian Lined Shrimp Same genus; L. amboinensis was first described as a variety of this species
• Thor amboinensis Sexy Shrimp Same superfamily (Alpheoidea), different family (Thoridae) Read guide · Compare

Older scientific names: Hippolysmata amboinensis, Hippolysmata vittata var. amboinensis.

Fun facts

1. Every adult is male and female at once: it starts life as a male, then becomes a hermaphrodite that lays eggs but can still mate as a male.
2. It advertises its cleaning service to passing fish with a side-to-side rocking dance.
3. In a lab study, these shrimp ate about 63% of parasite eggs in 12 hours during the day and cut the number of flukes that managed to infect fish roughly in half.
4. Its larvae drift in the plankton for two to almost five months before settling, which is why almost every skunk cleaner in a shop was caught on a reef.
5. Some fish let it clean inside their open mouths, and it will happily "clean" an aquarist's hand.

Learn more

• Wikipedia: Lysmata amboinensis en.wikipedia.org
• Reef Builders: Invertebrate spotlight, the skunk cleaner shrimp reefbuilders.com
• LiveAquaria: Scarlet Skunk Cleaner Shrimp care facts liveaquaria.com
• Militz & Hutson 2015, Beyond Symbiosis: Cleaner Shrimp Clean Up in Culture (PLoS ONE) pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
• WoRMS: Lysmata amboinensis marinespecies.org

Sources

1. WoRMS taxon record 241289 marinespecies.org
2. SeaLifeBase: Lysmata amboinensis summary sealifebase.se
3. Wikipedia: Lysmata amboinensis en.wikipedia.org
4. Wikipedia: Lysmata grabhami en.wikipedia.org
5. LiveAquaria: Scarlet Skunk Cleaner Shrimp liveaquaria.com
6. Reef Builders: skunk cleaner shrimp spotlight reefbuilders.com
7. Reefguide.org: Lysmata amboinensis reefguide.org
8. Militz & Hutson 2015, PLoS ONE 10(2): e0117723 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
9. Bauer 2006, Integrative and Comparative Biology 46(4): 430-438 academic.oup.com
10. Fiedler et al. 2010, BMC Evolutionary Biology 10: 297 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
11. Rhyne & Lin 2006, Bulletin of Marine Science 79(1): 165-204 research.nhm.org
12. Lin, Zhang & Rhyne 2002, Broodstock and larval nutrition of marine ornamental shrimp nutricionacuicola.uanl.mx
13. Calado et al. 2003, Marine ornamental decapods: popular, pricey, and poorly studied (J. Crustacean Biology) academic.oup.com

Care facts

The care facts on this guide and its product pages (care level, reef safety, temperament, size, tank, diet, flow, purpose, foods, acclimation and origin) combine 14 independent sources, checked October 25, 2026.

1. Scarlet Skunk Cleaner Shrimp LiveAquaria
2. The Kind of Skunk You Want Quality Marine
3. Skunk Cleaner Shrimp - Lysmata amboinensis - Medium/Large That Pet Place
4. Scarlet Skunk Cleaner Shrimp Coral Ridge Marine
5. Cleaner Shrimp Care Guide: The Reef Tank's Most Fascinating Cleanup Crew Member AquariumStoreDepot
6. Scarlet Skunk Cleaner Shrimp (Lysmata amboinensis) Squeaky's Aquatics
7. Cleaner Shrimp (Lysmata amboinensis) STL Marine Solutions
8. Scarlet Skunk Cleaner Shrimp (Lysmata amboinensis) Vossen Aquatics
9. Skunk Cleaner Shrimp Kraken Corals
10. Skunk Cleaner Shrimp Saltwater Aquarium Blog
11. Skunk Cleaner Shrimp saltwater fish care guide Top Shelf Aquatics
12. Cleaner Shrimp Furry Critter
13. Invertebrate Spotlight: The Skunk Cleaner Shrimp Reef Builders
14. Lysmata amboinensis SeaLifeBase

Scientific names and classification follow the World Register of Marine Species (AphiaID 241289). Last updated October 25, 2026.