Little whitish clearish bug like things? - What are they?

A

Anonymous

[Just got home from the meeting tonight and was looking closely at the bottom of my tank. Noticed these little things crawling around and had never seen them before. My worry is since I have had problems with Mantis Shrimp in the past, that they might be baby ones? They are segmented like Mantis Shrimp and curl up like them too. The have 2 longer antenneas in the front.
Can anyone tell from my description what these are?
Thank you.]
 
[Those are safe. They are probably ampipods. Copepods are good too, and both are eaten by wrasses, mandarins and many other fish.

I've got a lot of them in my refugium, as my display tank is very populated with very hungry fish.]
 
[Sounds like they are happy critters! That means they have a good food source and a lack of predators. Look for other critters like worms also. They can grow to large populations as well. Trade small rocks with other hobbyists to keep the critter diversity level high in your tank on occasion.]
 
[You are so lucky to have a thriving colony of amphipods or copepods. I also have hundreds of them, same as the picture above, running all over the rocks at night. A built in clean up crew. Also have hundreds of the tiny white starfish that are on the glass and rocks and never bother any corals...KW]
 
@sauer wrote:
[does it look like this [url=http://www.reefs.org/hhfaq/pages/picture_pages/faq_amphipod.html]http://www.reefs.org/hhfaq/pages/picture_pages/faq_amphipod.html[/url]] said:
[Yep....that is what they look like.....thanks.
Sandy]
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