Leopard Wrasse cleaning behavior

[andrewkw]

I recently introduced my Achilles tang who spent over 100 days in QT into my 180 gallon. Somehow he's gotten flukes again despite 2 treatments of prazi and cupramine. I am now treating the whole tank with prazi again. However I have noticed some odd behavior as he's frequently hanging out with my leopard wrasse. The 180 is a new tank with everything transferred over from my 112. It's bare bottom so I just have a container of sand for the wrasse to sleep in. The achilles was just hovering over the bed when the light came on, the leopard poked his head out then came out and proceeded to clean the achilles! At least twice he picked something off which perhaps was the hopefully dead / dying flukes.

Still don't know where the flukes came from and no other fish is showing any symptoms but they're all getting treated so hopefully it will be a thing of the past soon, but I've never seen the leopard clean any other fish before. Wish I had the camera out.

 

[fishmutt]

Well i have 2 leopards wrasses and have never seen such strange behavor. But they do eat pest worms, so maybe the achilles had worms (from sleeping in the works or something) and they might of sticked out of the gills and the leopard wrasse saw it and eat it. Idk, just an idea.

 

[locuus]

My choati does it all the time

 

[fishmutt]

Well I have a melagris and an ornate. Different species might do different things.

 

[eatbreakfast]

Nearly all of the reef safe Genera of wrasses, and some of the not reef safe, exhibit cleaning behavior as juveniles, most grow out of it, but it is still interesting and beneficial behavior.