Strange nocturnal wee beasties...

[Two Bit Scooter]

I woke up a few nights ago from a sound sleep at about 2:30 with no idea why. I did the usual listening for a strange noise, checked the kids and then looked in on the tank. (I don't know if it a good sign that I'm checking the kids first, or a bad sign that I'm glad I do) Anyway, first thing I see is that there's some kind of stuff floating in the tank. It looked like a snow globe that had been given a good shake. I grabbed a flashlight and looked closer and the specks started gathering around the light. Each was about 1/8" long and most of them were oriented vertically. There were thousands of them! My chromis kept darting out of the rocks and eating them and a few were going past the overflow, but over the next 30 minutes they all just seemed to disappear. I have not seen any since and there is no evidence they were there. Any ideas what they might have been?

They looked something like this:

[seahorse_man]

Plankton would be my guess

[Two Bit Scooter]

Maybe I should add 'and where they might have gone' and 'is this a common thing?'

It was really strange because they were larger than some of the pods in the tank and there were hundreds if not thousands of them but I have not seen anything like them before or since.

It was really cool to watch, but then again I felt the same way about the aptasia and those mini starfish when I first found those too.

[barometer]

It's probably just different kinds of pods. That's very common and shouldn't be a problem. You can always get a sixline wrasse or something later down the line that will feed on them.