One of the most established marine fish captive breeding programs belongs to ORA, and for
years they’ve been supplying the reef aquarium community with captive bred gobies and clownfish.
In our tanks these captive bred fish do very well, easily taking normal reef foods.
In the wild however, some of these species are much more specialized in their food requirements.
Take, for example, the Sharknose Goby - Elacatinus evelynae - which feeds exclusively on the
external parasites of other fish in the wild.
It’s a reef cleaner!
Hi guys and girls, I’m ReefMan, and this time we’re talking about the “Microhabitats
of sharknose goby cleaning stations and their links with cleaning behavior”.
This is an article published in Coral Reefs in August of 2021 and it’s open access - you
can find the link down below if you’d like to check it out.
I’ll also be featuring incredible 3D models of some of the cleaning stations the team
studied, from one of the author’s YouTube channels.
Check them out directly if you’d like to see the models in more detail, and thank you
to her for letting me share these with you!
This paper was all about looking at the traits of cleaning stations - were they covered in
coral?
Exposed or sheltered?
On big smooth rocks, or amongst nooks and crannies?
And then, once the traits were established, what effect did they have?
Were more gobies present?
Did more fish get cleaned?
As the stony corals that make up a coral reef grow, they naturally create a huge variation
in microhabitats.
They grow into and over each other, slowly building up a coral reef over many years.
In our tanks, we have to do this ourselves as we generally don’t want to wait years
for a reef to grow naturally.
If you do have Sharknose Gobies in your tank, you might consider creating a cleaning station
for them so that you can better experience their natural behavior.
We ignore it for most of our reef tank fish, but in the wild these fish are often found
almost exclusively in their specific niche habitats.
Cleaner fish, like the Sharknose Goby, spend nearly all their time at their cleaning stations.
Doing so increases the number of fish they’ll be able to clean vs roaming the reef, and
that means more food for the gobies.
Sharknose Gobies have been found in the Caribbean particularly near Faviidae corals.
Just like in our tanks, these grow into mounds in the wild, often with gentle undulations
and folds across the surface.
We can recreate the same in our tank by shaping some live rock similarly and then placing
some Favia or Chalices or other encrusting LPS corals on and around it.
The research team searched a Caribbean reef and identified 55 different coral heads that
were known to be used as cleaning stations over the previous 8 years of long term study.
They included 12 additional coral heads as controls, and these had never been known to
be used as cleaning stations.
A huge amount of physical work went into this paper.
Six people snorkeled daily over six weeks to collect data about the cleaning stations,
watching each for two minutes and searching for cleaners.
All told, they recorded 1,549 cleaning station surveys, and from these observations, a cleaner
occupancy rate was established for each cleaning station.
Between the occupancy surveys the team also observed cleaning behavior at each station
for a total of 223 behavioral observations.
As part of their research, the team also used photogrammetry to convert videos of the coral
into 3D models like you see here using a tool by Agisoft called Photoscan.
This is a really neat process, and something many of your smartphones can also do.
So, what did they find out?
Corals that served as cleaning stations were significantly taller than the control corals.
They also had more complex surfaces - more waves and undalations.
These traits didn’t tend to predict how frequently a cleaning station would be in
use though.
Occupancy did tend to increase with the complexity of the coral surface, but overall the specific
microhabitat traits didn’t impact how often fish were actually present at the station.
It did predict if the station would be used at all though.
Interestingly, while taller cleaning stations were much more common than short ones, cleaning
occurred less frequently at the taller stations.
Though it was less frequent, fish that did clean at the taller stations spent longer
there.
Maybe the fish using these stations get a better vantage point where they can watch
for predators while being cleaned and so they felt more comfortable spending longer there.
Taller stations are also more prominent and easier to locate and remember for the fish
being cleaned.
Stations with more nooks and crannies, and with more complex surfaces where the small
cleaner gobies could easily hide, had higher rates of cleaning irregardless of their overall
height.
So, if you’d like to build a cleaning station for your Sharknose gobies to use in your reef
tank, you should attempt to make a mound of rock and coral with complex surface features,
and that stands out above the surrounding rocks.
You should favor large polyp stony corals on this mound, instead of SPS like Acropora.
In the wild these fish don’t live very long, on average only about 50 days as adults, and
spend their entire life near their cleaning station.
They form monogamous pairs and spawn regularly near their station - each time laying between
200 and 250 eggs.
Less than 50% of these survive past the larval stage though… remember - small fish like
gobies form part of the base of the coral reef food chain.
It’s very common for cleaner fish to clean in our reef tanks just like they do in the
wild.
If you have a Sharknose Goby, you can further encourage this by setting up the right kind
of microhabitat for them to use in your tank.
I hope you enjoyed learning all about Sharknose Goby cleaning stations, take a moment to subscribe
if you’re new here.
Post a comment if you’ve got questions, and check out the author’s YouTube channel
as well.
Be kind to each other, stay safe, and have a fantastic day!
Bye!