• Home
• About Fishes
• Fish Department
• Collections
• What's new
• Find a fish
  • Species name
  • Common name
  • Type of fish
  • Glossary
• Identify a fish
• Student stuff
• FAQs
• Fish movies
• Fish links

Find a Fish

Striped Cleaner Wrasse
Labroides dimidiatus (Valenciennes, 1839)

Two Striped Cleaner Wrasses cleaning a monocle bream, possibly Scolopsis affinis at a depth of 16m, Redang Island, east coast of peninsular Malaysia, April 2001. View larger image.

A Striped Cleaner Wrasse cleaning a Potato Cod (view fact sheet) at a depth of 13m, the Cod Hole, Great Barrier Reef, off Lizard Island, June 2002. View larger image.

A Striped Cleaner Wrasse cleaning the gills of a Black-spot Goatfish (view fact sheet) at a depth of 21m, North West Solitary Island, New South Wales, June 2002. View larger image.

The Striped Cleaner Wrasse is blue to yellow above fading to white or yellow below. There is a black stripe from the eye to the caudal fin margin. The stripe widens posteriorly.

It has thick lips and a pair of canines at the front of both jaws.

This species grows to 11.5cm in length.

The Striped Cleaner Wrasse is well known for its feeding behaviour. It establishes a "cleaning station" often a cave or overhang, where it swims in a bobbing, dance-like motion. Larger fishes come to the cleaning station to have ectoparasites removed. The Striped Cleaner Wrasse swims around the fish picking off and eating the parasites. It often enters the mouth and gill chamber of large fishes (see lower image).

The Striped Cleaner Wrasse occurs on rocky and coral reefs in tropical (and some temperate) marine waters of the Indo-Pacific.

In Australia it is recorded from southern to north-western Western Australia and from northern Queensland to southern New South Wales.

View a map of the collecting localities of specimens in the Australian Museum Fish Collection.

Further reading

1. Grutter, A.S., Deveney, M.R., Whittington, I.D. & R.J.G.Lester. 2002. The effect of the cleaner fish Labroides dimidiatus on the capsalid monogenean Benedenia lolo parasite of the labrid fish Hemigymnus melapterus. Journal of Fish Biology. 61: 1098-1108.
2. Hutchins, B. & R. Swainston. 1986. Sea Fishes of Southern Australia. Complete Field Guide for Anglers and Divers. Swainston Publishing. Pp. 180.
3. Kuiter, R.H. 1996. Guide to Sea Fishes of Australia. New Holland. Pp. 433.
4. Kuiter, R.H. 2000. Coastal Fishes of South-eastern Australia. Gary Allen. Pp. 437.
5. Randall, J.E., Allen, G.R. & R.C. Steene. 1997. Fishes of the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea. Crawford House Press. Pp. 557.