do fish attack cleaner shrimp?

[proverbs]

well, i had my cleaner shrimp for awhile, but recently i noticed that he is missing one on his hands and his whiskers have been chopped off. i have 2 blue tangs, with a maroon clown, and a coral beauty. i was wondering if the damage could be caused by one of my fish.

i also notcied that i never seen my cleaner shrimp clean any of my fish..? found that strange because i see it all the time at the fish store.

[BillyZ]

some fish in particular would certainly go after a shrimp. A puffer is the first of many that comes to mind. Of the ones you have listed in your tank I wouldn't normally suspect them of aggression to a shrimp. Except perhaps the maroon clown, they can sometimes just be aggressive in general, IIRC.

There is another option, and that is a crab that you're maybe not aware of in your tank. Often times a crab comes in on LR as a hitchhiker and are rarely "Good" additions to your tank. Next time the lights go out in the tank and you've shut off your lights in the room, scope around the tank, (use something to give enough light to see without being direct light into the tank) and see if you find any new tankmates.

[neilster1]

My three-stripe damsel did that to a newly-introduced cleaner.. the agression ceased after a day.

[tecwzrd]

Nothing you listed except the maroon as Billz mentioned should mess with it. They can be territorial and if you have other shrimp then another one could have attacked also but usually that happens with two CBS and not cleaners in general.

As far as cleaning goes they can only clean if the fish comes to them and some fish are a little leery of them if you just added. It took my YT about 2 weeks to go to the cleaner and the rest of my fish haven’t tried to be cleaned at all from what I observe.

Lastly considering most of us are at work 8+ hours and the cleaning could be done while we are away and we are just missing it for the short 4-6 hours we get to enjoy the tank.