Many wrasses are specialized and voracious feeders, as reflected by the highly variable skull and body shape, modified   pharyngeal jaw, and prominent canines. The type of nourishment ranges widely: fish, ectoparasites, mollusks, polychaete worms, decapod crabs, corals, coral mucous, amphipods, various echinoderms, plankton, and several types of vegetation. Many small wrasses follow larger fishes and exploit any benthic (reef bottom) disturbances that help to reveal the well-camouflaged invertebrates. A considerable number are plankton feeders, forming schools in reef gaps, reef fronts or other areas with current. The food habits of cleaner wrasses are probably most well known. Cleaner wrasses remove mucous, parasites and scales from the bodies of larger fishes. Cleaning is not limited to the Labroides genus however; young bluehead and young Spanish hogfish in the Bahamas have also been observed cleaning larger fishes. Finally, some piscivorous (fish-eating) wrasses mimic harmless fishes (Randall and Kuiter, 1989 in Nelson, 1994).

Primary Diet: carnivore (Piscivore , Eats eggs, Eats body fluids, Eats non-insect arthropods, Molluscivore ); herbivore ; omnivore