Some of how safe hawks are with shrimp and cuc is luck, some individual personality, some how often you feed and some stimulation. Predators are normally smarter than other fish, it's why the are top dog, and they can get bored. Sometimes you see hawkfish swimming little laps of the tank for quite some time or developing behaviours that they wouldn't in the wild. A example of this I saw with my flame hawk who would irritate my female clown. The hawk would perch in front of her and display waiting for her to chase it away, it then proceeded to swim off round the tank and come back to the exact spot and do it again and again. I've also witnessed them picking up small hermits, swimming off with them and then dropping them down the back of the rockwork. When the hermits come back they did the same thing again.
So its been suggested that eating shrimp can be due to boredom as cleaner shrimp aren't normally eaten in the wild. That isn't to say it's not just an opportunistic thing, they could be cleaning up after a bad molt or the shrimp might have died naturally. At the end of the day I've had no problems with cleaner or blood shrimp and flame and long nosed hawks for quite some time, sometimes a year or two, but eventually the shrimp dissappear whether naturally or with some help.
he reminded me much of a hawkfish actually. Kenya's are a much underrated coral imo. Picture perfect vision of a soft coral, especially with a beautiful hawk nestled in.
