High Tide Aquatics

Amphipods eating corals?

I've heard mixed things on this. Anyone know if it can happen? I've started noticing some of mine creeping around a zoa frag I have at night...
 
I have never heard of this. At night amphipods creep around just about everything. Are you seeing damage or are they just closed up?


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So far just closed up. Have been closed for the past couple days though, and have seen some of the amphipods creep around the corals (definitely amphipods btw)
 
Yeah, my amphipod population seems to have exploded in the past few days and I've started noticing some big ones. Gonna keep them under observation for a couple days, see what happens. Unfortunately I've got a pretty small tank (15 gallons) so that kind of limits what livestock I can put in to deal with them.
 
Mandarins have really small mouths, more for Copepods. The ones that harm polyps are the Large ampipods

Its the big ones about 1/4" or slightly bigger that I've seen usually eat Zoos and Palys. Usually going after the polyps skirt/tentacles first.

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Yup, those look like the ones in my tank.

Caught a couple snooping around my zoas last night, will try to take some video if I see them again.
 
I've nuked my tank before with interceptor as well. I just get all the important inverts I want to keep out of the tank during the process.
 
Update: have not seen them on my corals in the past few days, but will try to observe them to see if they appear more.

Although I set up a media reactor the other day which somehow sucked up a bunch of them, so that might have been part of it...
 
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