Planktonic critters

BCash74

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A few months back I peered into my tank a few hours after dark and was amazed at the “soup” of critters swimming around. I like to gaze after dark and can always find both pelagic and benthic copepods and amphipods, but this was crazy: thousands upon thousands of various critters:


These were by far the most interesting ones:

IMG_3755.jpeg


Any ideas on what these could be? Tank was up for 4-6 weeks at this point: stocked it with 100 bs TBS rock. Initially I thought I had one mantis shrimp: you can hear the click in the video. However, 6 months in, I’ve caught 6 mantis shrimp and my tank clicks more now than ever. Could these have been juvenile/early planktonic mantis shrimp?
 
Wow. There's a lot going on in the video.
I suppose the long bodied ones could be mantis but purely speculation.
Do you feed any phyto?

Pretty cool.
 
Wow. There's a lot going on in the video.
I suppose the long bodied ones could be mantis but purely speculation.
Do you feed any phyto?

Pretty cool.
Yes, I really wanted to keep the biodiversity on the liverock thriving, so I feed 5 mls of Reef Nutrition live phyto every evening. The tank is a 100g IM with sump.
 

WHAT KIND OF SUBSTRATE ARE YOU RUNNING ON YOUR TANK?

  • Bare bottom

    Votes: 3 20.0%
  • A shallow bed of fine sand

    Votes: 3 20.0%
  • A shallow bed of coarser sand

    Votes: 3 20.0%
  • A deep sand bed

    Votes: 2 13.3%
  • Mixed substrate or varying sand depth

    Votes: 4 26.7%
  • Some other substrate (posted in the comments)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • I don’t have a reef tank yet

    Votes: 0 0.0%
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