Cleaning station

A reef manta ray at a cleaning station, maintaining a near stationary position atop a coral patch for several minutes while being cleaned by cleaner fish.

A rockmover wrasse Novaculichthys taeniourus being cleaned by Hawaiian cleaner wrasses, Labroides phthirophagus on a reef in Hawaii. Some manini and a filefish wait their turn.

A cleaning station is a location where fish, sea turtles, hippos and other aquatic life, freshwater and marine, congregate to be cleaned.

The cleaning process includes the removal of parasites from the animal's body (both externally and internally), and can be performed by various other animals (including cleaner shrimp and numerous species of cleaner fish, especially wrasses and gobies (Elacatinus spp.)).

When the animal approaches a cleaning station, it will open its mouth wide or position its body in such a way as to signal that it needs cleaning. The cleaner fish will then remove and eat the parasites from the skin, even swimming into the mouth and gills of any fish being cleaned. This is a form of cleaning symbiosis.

Cleaning stations may be associated with coral reefs, located either on top of a coral head or in a slot between two outcroppings. Other cleaning stations may be located under large clumps of floating seaweed or at an accepted point in a river or lagoon.

Some species of combtooth blenny, most notably the false cleanerfish, mimic the appearance and behaviour of cleaners, then tear away scales or flesh when suitably close to the victim.

Gallery

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  Stenopus hispidus banded cleaner shrimp on a Xestospongia muta barrel sponge: The shrimp wait to remove external parasites and dead skin from visiting fish clients.

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  A parrotfish being cleaned by Hawaiian cleaner wrasses, Labroides phthirophagus (photographed in 2005 in Hawaii)

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  A needlefish being cleaned by L. phthirophagus

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  A Hawaiian cleaner wrasse inside the gill of a pufferfish

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  An orangespine unicornfish being cleaned by a Hawaiian cleaner wrasse

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  A rockmover wrasse gets cleaned by a Hawaiian cleaner wrasse while an orangespine unicornfish waits its turn

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  A goatfish, Mulloidichthys flavolineatus, at Kona, Hawaii, being cleaned by two Hawaiian cleaner wrasses

See also

• Doctor fish
• Lysmata amboinensis

References

• Animal Communication Networks, Page 525, By Peter K. McGregor, Published by Cambridge University Press