Who Gives A Fish Forums

Hi everyone,

I've been noticing my skunk cleaner has a thing for my relatively new Acan frags. They haven't been freshly fed or anything like that. The lights are off, but this guy's still up and about, picking at some of the incomplete heads - you know, the ones that got split during fragging. They're otherwise healthy, ate mysis the day before and all that. Is this something I should be concerned about?

It's likely your skunk cleaner is targeting the unhealthy tissue on the edge. Is it picking at any other parts of these corals, or any other corals for that matter?

Our experience with skunk cleaners in our 280 has been that they can be quite aggressive. Normally, they're after food, especially post-feeding, but we've also seen them bothering our LPS at other times. No noticeable harm so far, though.

It's likely just cleaning up dead tissue on those incomplete heads. Skunk cleaners are known to target weak or damaged areas. I've seen shrimp do something similar, raiding the gut sacs of acan polyps by shoving their claw in through the mouth and pulling out food.

I had a similar issue with my peppermint shrimp, it was picking at my acan and causing it to close up. Took about 3 days for it to fully recover and open back up. I ended up moving the shrimp to my other tank, one that doesn't have any acans, problem solved.

I had a similar experience with peppermint shrimp, they completely destroyed my acans. They were literally tearing them apart, which is why I no longer keep shrimp in my tank, they're just too much trouble.

I got rid of my cleaner shrimp, banished him to the sump for now until I can return him to the LFS. He wreaked havoc on my acan. That sneaky shrimp would wait till I was out of sight, even after the food was gone, then swoop in and raid the acan's stomach, making off with all the food and causing damage in the process. Had to remove him, couldn't take the risk anymore.

Same thing happened to me, got rid of 'em. Shrimp are now tank-mates in my biocube, not welcome in my main tank anymore.

Had a similar experience with a peppermint shrimp, ripped apart one of my acans. Now they're relegated to the sump. I'm also having issues with my redline, it's been stressing out my acros, so they're going up for sale.

If he's just pecking at the half heads, it's probably cleaning them. Still, I'd keep a close eye on him, especially during feeding. I've had one before that would reach into coral throats for food.