other symbiotic relationships...

[Magnum Man]

symbiotic relationships seem rare, but are found between everything from mushrooms to fish... in studying Bitterlings. they lay their eggs in live shellfish, and the babies are raised inside the shellfish, and both species get a benefit...

these relationships, seem to abound in fish, including cleaner wrasses, clown fish, etc. any other symbiotic relationships we can experience in the aquarium???

 

[Colin_T]

Bangaii cardinalfish live among the spines of long spine sea urchins in the wild, however in aquariums they are usually kept without the urchin.

There are Periclemenes shrimp and porcelain crabs that live among the tentacles of sea anemones.

There are small crabs that live on Acropora corals.

Decorator crabs sometimes carry sea anemones for protection and the anemone gets to move around.

Small brittle starfish live in sponges.

Goby that lives in a burrow with a shrimp.

 

[GaryE]

Gut bacteria - poor feeding will show you that one as pretty well every complex animal has symbiotic relationships with bacteria.

There are Malawi's cuckoo Synodontis catfish who use mouthbrooding Cichlids to raise their young, with the Cichlid's own eggs as a food source (don't you just hate it when that happens?).

You can even think about things like Ich. In the wild, the fish gets one cyst, it bursts and that's that. It had a parasite that may or may not affect things, and the parasite is gone. In a closed system like a tank, the parasite doesn't flit by but becomes an outbreak and kills it. We don't know if there's ever an advantage to the fish, in the wild...

We're seeing data that tapeworms aren't all bad for us, so maybe a light load of helminth worms in a fish could not be a bad thing. Maybe.

There's a molly species that is all female, but that triggers its self cloning through the attentions of a molly male of another species that contributes nothing genetically.

 

[simonas]

When I had my marine tanks my favourite inhabitants were small watchmen gobies with Pistol shrimps, watching the pair in the hole prepared and maintained by the shrimp is ace