---
title: Glass Shrimp (Cuapetes tenuipes)
scientific_name: Cuapetes tenuipes
common_name: Glass Shrimp
taxon: Shrimps
published: 2024-11-28T11:54:07.704Z
updated: 2026-08-13T21:02:54.582Z
tags: Glass Shrimp, Cuapetes tenuipes, Shrimps, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/shrimps/glass-shrimp
---

# Glass Shrimp (*Cuapetes tenuipes*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Shrimps (*Caridea*)
- **Size:** up to 3 cm
- **Depth:** 1-40 m
- **Diet:** Detritivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** On anemones, corals and soft corals as a commensal
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Gonochoric

## How to recognise it

- body entirely transparent apart from fine white and purple markings
- internal organs and gut visible through the shell
- always on a host - anemone, soft coral or urchin
- length up to 3 cm

A shrimp you can read a text through. Three centimeters (1.2 in) of glass with a few white and violet lines, sitting on an anemone or a soft coral, its gut and eggs the only clearly visible parts of it.

Transparency is a defense with a cost. It works well in open water where there is nothing to cast a shadow against, and much less well on a host - which is why these shrimps also spend their lives on animals nothing wants to bite. Between the two, the shrimp is effectively unreachable.

Finding one is a matter of looking at hosts rather than at the reef. Work over an anemone slowly with a torch and the shape resolves out of the background: first the eyes, then the gut, then the animal. This is the group macro photographers spend whole dives on, and it is why the same coral head repays a second visit.

It feeds on detritus and mucus from the host and takes parasites off it, which puts it somewhere between a lodger and a cleaner - one of the many small arrangements a reef runs on that nobody notices until they go looking.

## Also known as

- **English:** Red-claw Cuapetes Shrimp, Glass shrimp
- **French:** Péricliménès à longues pinces
- **Japanese:** ロングクローシュリンプ

## Scientific synonyms

- *Kemponia tenuipes* (Borradaile, 1898)
- *Periclimenes (Falciger) kolumadulensis* Borradaile, 1915
- *Periclimenes borradailei* Rathbun, 1904
- *Periclimenes tenuipes* Borradaile, 1898

## Range

Indian Ocean, Mozambique Channel, New Caledonian Exclusive Economic Zone, South Pacific Ocean

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/shrimps/glass-shrimp)*
*Updated: August 13, 2026*