Cleaner fish

The cleaner wrasse Labroides dimidiatus removing dead skin and external parasites from the grouper Epinephelus tukula.

Cleaner fish are fish that provide a service to other fish species by removing dead skin and ectoparasites. This is an example of mutualism, an ecological interaction that benefits both parties.

A wide variety of fishes show cleaning behaviors. They include wrasse, cichlids, catfish, and gobies, as well as by a number of different species of cleaner shrimp.

There is also at least one predatory mimic, the sabre-toothed blenny. It mimics cleaner fish but in fact bites off pieces of fin.

Cleaner Fish Media

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  Two bluestreak cleaner wrasses removing dead skin and external parasites from a potato grouper

• Video of bluestreak cleaner wrasse cleaning the gills of an elongate surgeonfish

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  Client Mulloidichthys flavolineatus at a cleaning station.

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  Protein structure of non-mammalian specific hormone, vasotocin, from the posterior pituitary

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  The bluestriped fangblenny is an aggressive mimic of the cleaner wrasse.

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  An example of an outdoor aquaculture facility in Chile.

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  Sea lice causing morphological damage on cultured salmon in New Brunswick, Canada

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  A disruptively patterned white-spotted puffer being cleaned by a conspicuously coloured Hawaiian cleaner wrasse

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  Lumpfish (Cyclopterus lumpus), a cleaner fish employed in salmon farming in Atlantic Canada, Scotland, Iceland and Norway

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  A neon goby from the Western Atlantic