golden coral shrimp

About

The golden coral shrimp (Stenopus scutellatus) is the Caribbean cousin of the more commonly kept banded coral shrimp, and it brings a lot of personality to a reef setup. Where its Pacific relative sports red and white, this species wears bold yellow and white banding across its body and claws, making it one of the more visually distinctive shrimp available from Atlantic waters. It ranges through the Western Atlantic, including the Lesser Antilles and the Brazilian coast around Pernambuco, where it typically shelters in reef crevices and rocky overhangs. Like others in the Stenopus genus, it takes on a cleaner role in the wild, setting up stations where fish come to have parasites and dead tissue removed. In the aquarium it will often continue this behavior, which is genuinely useful in a fish-heavy reef. That said, this is not a community shrimp in the easygoing sense. It is strongly territorial toward its own kind, and keeping a mated pair is really the only reliable way to house two together. It will also harass or harm smaller, more passive shrimp species. For a hobbyist with some invertebrate experience and a reasonably well-established reef, it makes a rewarding and functional addition.