Fire Shrimp Lysmata debelius

The Fire Shrimp, also called the Scarlet Cleaner Shrimp but this name is also applied to the Pacific and Caribbean Cleaner Shrimps, is native to caves and crevices of reefs in the tropical Indo-Pacific Oceans from eastern Africa to the mid Pacific.

It has a red body with white spots on the front half, white rear legs and red claws on its red front legs. It grows to some 3cm long excluding its long white antennae. It differs from the Starry Blood Shrimp, L. splendida, in that the latter has white spots also on the back half of the body.

Most of its diet is cleaning dead tissues and parasites from larger fish, which keeps the client fish healthy and provides the shrimp with food and protection from predators. The shrimp develops as a male and then as a hermaphrodite, which allows it to pair and breed with any other hermaphrodite of its species.