Amphipods overtaking corals?

[jcm1229]

I have a question.

I have setup a small nano-reef (5.5g). It's been up and running about 6 months. (I've setup successful nanos before (10g setups) and have a 5year old 37g reef running now.) My intentions were to house my Florida ricordia and zooanthids there. I have had problems with all corals degrading. I added a 2.5g hang on refugium for added water volume and my pod population has exploded exponentially!

I have had several zooanthid colonies perish. I have seen numerous bristle worms but I'm not sure if they are causing problems as I've always had bristle worms in my other tanks without incident. I have noticed rather large (twice as big as normal) different color amphipods all over the corals. Not sure if they are irritating them or eating them, but their size and color is what drew my attention to them. Sorry I don't have any photos. Again, they appear to be amphipods, only larger than I have seen before and some with an orange color and some with a blue-green tint.

Any ideas if these are different than your run of the mill amphipods or could be causing the coral problems?

Thanks!

 

[subcrx]

I would try removing the bristle worms, they may do some good when small, but they are dangerous when large, you want to stop a population explosion now.

 

[The steven liu]

If anything it might have been the bristle worms. Solution:
get six lined wrasse for the bristle worms, and get a Mandarine dragonet for the pods if you are concerned.