---
title: Clear Cleaner Shrimp (Urocaridella antonbruunii)
scientific_name: Urocaridella antonbruunii
common_name: Clear Cleaner Shrimp
taxon: Shrimps
published: 2023-12-24T21:10:47.158Z
updated: 2026-08-19T12:11:07.119Z
tags: Clear Cleaner Shrimp, Urocaridella antonbruunii, Shrimps, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/shrimps/clear-cleaner-shrimp
---

# Clear Cleaner Shrimp (*Urocaridella antonbruunii*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Shrimps (*Caridea*)
- **Size:** up to 3 cm
- **Depth:** 2-60 m
- **Diet:** Cleaner
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Cave mouths and overhangs, at a cleaning station
- **Reproduction:** Brooder, Gonochoric

## How to recognise it

- glass-clear body with red and white bands on the legs and a red-spotted back
- hovers in open water at a cave mouth rather than sitting on the rock
- rocks its body back and forth when a fish approaches
- length up to 3 cm

A transparent shrimp, 3 cm (1.2 in), hovering in the mouth of a cave with red and white banded legs and a scatter of red spots on the back. Groups of a dozen hang in the water together, which is unusual for a shrimp - almost everything else in the family sits on rock.

They advertise by dancing. When a client fish approaches, the shrimp rock the body rapidly back and forth, and experiments have shown the dance is a real signal: shrimp dance more when they are hungry, fish choose dancing shrimp over still ones, and the dance rate predicts whether a fish will stop.

Cleaning is the trade - parasites, dead tissue and mucus taken off fish that hold still and open their mouths and gills for it. Client fish return repeatedly to a station and appear to remember it.

The transparency is protection. A shrimp hanging in open water at a cave mouth is exposed to everything hunting there, and being nearly invisible is what makes the position survivable, along with a truce that even hunting predators observe while being cleaned.

## Also known as

- **English:** clear cleaner shrimp
- **Russian:** Прозрачная креветка-чистильщик

## Scientific synonyms

- *Leandrites longipes* Liu, Liang & Yan, 1990
- *Periclimenes antonbruunii* Bruce, 1967

## Range

Comoros, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Mozambique Channel, New Caledonian Exclusive Economic Zone, Pacific Ocean, Red Sea, Seychelles

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/shrimps/clear-cleaner-shrimp)*
*Updated: August 19, 2026*