Can a cleaner shrimp kill fish?

[BlackTip]

I have two skunk cleaner shrimps. They used to bully a Starry Bleny. They would corner him when he is resting on a rock crevices, then force their legs into his mouth to steal food. He was annoyed, but he never put a good fight. One day, I found the young Bleny dead.

Last night, I watched the shrimps doing the same thing to a goby. The goby was cornered into his hole, and the shrimps were forcing their legs into his mouth. He put up a fight, but not a good one. After about 5 minutes of bullying, the shrimp left him alone.

Can this behavior kill or harm the fish?

 

[cloak]

Not a healthy fish IMO. What your describing though just sounds like normal cleaning behavior from the shrimp. To limit this you might want to start feeding them more. GL.

 

[Rcook9]

In my tank my cleaner shrimp is pretty aggressive towards new fish and has been put in his place more than once by the new fish. I don't know if my skunk cleaner was overly excited to clean a new royal gramma I added a month ago or so or what happened. They got into a little tussle because the shrimp was trying to go into the royal gramma cave and the shrimp lost an antenna. I don't think the shrimp would be able to put up a good enough fight to kill a fish, but I have seen mine get excited about new fish in the tank.

 

[lifeoffaith]

Unless they were stealing all of the food, I wouldn't think they would be able to kill a fish.

 

[GimpyFin]

I agree this sounds like normal cleaner shrimp behavior, and is not aggressive even though it sorta looks like the shrimp is man-handling the fish. When the fish are through with being cleaned, they will typically swim away or shoo the shrimp away. Some fish will even signal to the shrimp when they want to be cleaned. (An achilles tang will turn from almost a blackish color to pale blue and his eye ringlets will turn blue as well.) Kinda neat to watch.