This is the story of the fish and shrimp that live in perfect harmony. Randall's Sailfin Shrimp Goby is a cute little fish that is a bottom dweller living in the sand, they build a burrow which when they sense danger they can retreat into for cover. As water movement tends to shift the sand around a lot they have a constant battle on their hands keeping the burrow from filling back in, these guys have come up with the perfect solution to that problem. They employ house keepers in the form of Snapping shrimps, this symbiotic relationship works well for both parties. While the Goby sits guard out side the shrimps have the job of maintaining the burrow, spending their days pushing sand and bits of broken coral back out side. For their efforts the Goby guard will hunt small fish and crustaceans the shrimp get to scavenge left overs and also feed on the Gobbies waste (ooh that's a raw deal).
Most of the time the shrimp are hidden away inside the burrow doing their chores only to be seen for a few seconds as they bring debris out. Usually there is one shrimp per household but on one rare occasion I spotted two shrimps hanging outside their hole along with the homeowner.
Information on Randall's Goby is scarce this may have some thing to do with it only being discovered in 1978, few studies have been carried out and it's numbers world wide are unknown. What we do know is they are only spread over a small part of the indo-pacific.
http://www.aquamaps.org/preMap.php?cache=1&SpecID=Fis-32251
In recent years this pretty little fish has become very popular with aquarium owners all over the globe, the aquarium trade is massive and has been a major cause of species depletion, we can but hope that this wonderful fish continues to be seen in the wild rather than only fish tanks in the future.
