# Freaking Right Out... What are these? Shrimp or Something Bad?



## joel.c (Sep 11, 2012)

Hey Everyone,

So was watching the tank last night under the moonlights and what was normally almost particle free water turned into some excitement. The water became filled with tiny specks. At first I thought something stirred up the sand bed but upon close inspection these particles were alive!!! They were very small less than 1mm and in the thousands. Twitching around and trying to anchor themselves on anything they could find.

They kind of look like shrimp, I do have two cleaner shrimp in my tank but at the same time I began to worry if they small creatures were bad. I did my best to take some shots, but it was VERY hard to capture a good picture.

Please tell me if you know what these things are and if its bad.

Thank you,
Joel


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## bud091 (Dec 25, 2012)

Look a lot like shrimp they have the clear body that's how they look when there born but I can't say for sure if that's baby shrimp or not


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## Bullet (Apr 19, 2014)

Look like copepods to me 
Very valuable !


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## J_T (Mar 25, 2011)

Possibly Mysis shrimp. Likely Amphiopods.

Too big to be a copepod, and wrong body shape.


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## goobafish (Jan 27, 2015)

They are likely pods. If your tank is new, (1-2 months) it is normal to regularly have explosions. Mine usually come right after lights out, or anytime I drop in some phyto.


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## joel.c (Sep 11, 2012)

Mine has been running for about 6-7 months now. As long as its healthy I am fine with it. I have been on edge recently because I lost some fish due to an illness I could not diagnose. Anything I haven't seen before in the tank freaks me out, I just want the disease to fade out in there so I can put the surviving fish back. 

Seems like the general response is that these things are fine. It was literally like a small snow storm's worth of these things. I would guess that the corals and skimmers ate them over the night.


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