Symbiosis

I have this 4-walled glass container. Inside of it I have some sand, rocks, saltwater, fish and other sea creatures. I thoroughly enjoy watching the inhabitants of my aquarium interact with each other and their surroundings. It is so natural, but yet so unnatural.

I recently got a cleaner shrimp to add to my aquarium (pictured left). I was having a major algae fight at the bottom of the tank and it must have weakend the immune system of my beloved yellow tang (pictured right). So long story short my yellow tang came down with ich, which is a common aquarium disease in both salt and fresh water aquariums.

Since I was already treating my tank for the algae at the bottom of the tank (which was actually a bacteria (but for some reason everyone refers to it as red slime algae (scientifically Cyanobacteria)), I felt like it would be a bad idea to also treat the tank for ich. So I did a little research and I saw that cleaner shrimp will eat parasites off of other fish. I said, "Now that would be neat! I can get this little shrimp, have him clean off my tang and hopefully prevent it from spreading and also get to add something neat to my aquarium."

So I got in the car and went down to High Tide Aquarium, which is my favorite place to buy all of my saltwater aquarium supplies and live animals. We (Kristin and me) looked into all the little cubbys and looked at the shrimps. Then we consulted the associate working there and chatted a little bit about how the cleaner shrimp work. I was so amazed, and honestly troubled by the fact that the fish know to come to the shrimp when they have a problem. How does that happen? It makes no sense. These small little fish know to go to the shrimp when they have a parasite on them, just like we know to go to the doctor when we are ill.

Symbiosis. Nature is just as smart (or smarter than humans).

Well after acclimating the new shrimp to the aquarium, I was surprised to see the cleaner shrimp jumping from the rock that he was on to the yellow tang. It worked! You could definitely tell that it was not comfortable for the tang, and he would occasionally run off (or should I say swim off), but the tang kept returning to the shrimp. By the next day, it looked like the tang had no more white spots on his body.

Now I just hope that the cleaner shrimp will be able to find other things within the aquarium to eat so that he doesn't die and he can continue to fight off the evil parasites of the saltwater aquarium!