im going to sound stupid!!

does anyone know if chromis can act as cleaner fish? i recently had an ich outbreak, and i just let it run its course the fish were healthy and stayed healthy through out so figured no need to do anything to stress them further! But to my point my yellow tang was laying on its side and 1 of my chromis seemed to be looking for stuff to pick off! now i didnt see it pick and i cant be sure thats what was happening but i thought id share

 

well IME when a fish is dying fish tend to Nip at them. not a good thing:-/

 

the tang is healthy and happy, swims around fine and is eating like a pig, but he swims up to the chromis and turns on its side

 

Chromis are considered plankton eaters. Most of the parasites are tiny. Maybe the tang was hoping it would get lucky and have a parasite removed. I have seen tangs present themselves to wrasses for parasite service.

 

I wouldn't think so. This, too, will sound stupid, but, you sure its a chromis?

 

haha absolutely positive. as i said was the strangest thing i have ever seen

 

get a cleaner shrimp or two, they will clean off the ich and parasites

 

When I first got my Yellow tang I noticed it was trying to come down with the ick,had all the symptoms and it would let my two cleaner shrimp work on it but sometimes it would go over to where the chromis would hang out and back up to him and he would glance off the tang like he was helping to pick the ick off so I have seen this for myself. Never was a bad case of ick and this behavior stopped after all the ick was gone but I seen them do this several times.Go figure,but it happened.

 

the ich was not a bad case either, i dont have a cleaner shrimp because i have the sting ray and im having a hard time getting a neon goby. was actually the first case of ich ive had since starting saltwater so i have been blessed, 1 case of it every 4 years sounds good to me haha

 

Weird! Next time try to snap a few pics, or even a video. Never even heard of that before.