What's living in my Fluval?

[vessxpress1]

I recently opened up my Fluval 304 to put new media in and there were pods flying around all over in the thing. Some of them pretty good sized. It only gets light when I open it up once a month. It's been running for a few months and they were never there before now. Some of them are maybe 2 mm long, straight and thin and some have an arched back and kind of move like shrimp. I think the ones that move like shrimp are amphipods. One of them was moving on the lid and I threw it in the tank. Then it didn't move but my six line ate it. I cleaned the foam and everything but when I started it up again, it blew a bunch of their dead bodies in the tank. What's there life cycle (how many days, months..etc. do they live) and could it be bad if I have so many diing in there? I've never noticed them in the tank but I figure they've got to be in there.

[dugg]

It's like having free fish food delivered fresh daily. Pods are food for all kinds of things in your tank. You can even buy pods in bottles to seed your tank with. Sounds like your system is doing good. Pods are the only food in my tank. I never feed my fish anything. They live completely off of the pod population.

[WaterKeeper]

Pods of all types are scavengers and are probably feeding off the biofilm that has developed in your filter. They tend to avoid light, a fact who's reason was made clear by your Six-line :D, so you Fluval is now a refugium.