Bluestreak cleaner wrasse

The bluestreak cleaner wrasse, Labroides dimidiatus, is one of the most recognisable fish on the reef and one of the hardest to keep alive in a home aquarium. We stock it and people ask for it, so this page is about what it actually needs rather than what it looks like.

Our recommendation is to pass on this fish. That is an unusual thing for a shop to write, so the reasoning is set out below.

What it eats, which is the whole problem

Cleaner wrasses feed by picking parasites, dead tissue and mucus off other fish. That is not a behaviour it does in addition to eating normally. That is the diet.

A reef supplies it with a constant stream of client fish. A home aquarium does not. Even a well-stocked tank holds a handful of fish carrying very few parasites, which is nowhere near enough to feed a cleaner wrasse. Many specimens never learn to take prepared food at all, and the ones that do often take it inconsistently. The result is a slow decline over weeks or months that is easy to miss and usually put down to bad luck.

The other consideration

Cleaner wrasses do real work on the reef. Studies of reefs where cleaners have been removed show measurable effects on the health and growth of the fish that relied on them. Wild-caught cleaner wrasse are taken out of a system that depends on them, for a tank where most will not survive the year. That is worth weighing before buying one, independently of the husbandry.

What to buy instead

If the appeal is a busy fish that works over the tank all day dealing with pests, the melanurus wrasse does exactly that, takes prepared food readily, and does well in a home aquarium. It is the wrasse we recommend to almost everyone.

If the appeal is the look, the slim body and the dark lateral stripe, a neon-striped goby gives you something visually similar in a fish that will live. See the marine gobies we stock.

Both options, and the honest comparison between all the wrasses we carry, are on the wrasses we stock page.

If you still want one

Then buy it properly. Only take a specimen you have personally watched eating prepared food, and only put it in a large, heavily stocked, mature tank. It reaches about 10 to 11 cm. Do not buy one to control an existing parasite problem on your other fish, because it will not clear an outbreak and the correct treatment is a proper one.

Marine fish are in-store purchase and pickup only. We do not send live fish by courier or freight. Ring 0420 484 584 to ask what is in.