[rabbitmq-discuss] Why are deliveries still showing even though msg counts show 0 in admin?

[AndyB]

I'm seeing data in the RabbitMQ Admin page for my Queue that has me
rather confused.  I have ~30 consumers on the queue.  The publishes to
the queue are done in large batches at periodic intervals.  For
example, a schedule kicks off every 30 minutes and looks for work that
needs to be submitted, and then sends a publish for each piece of work
to the queue.  So the queue will build up pretty quickly and then get
processed down by the consumers.  When the batch begins getting
published I can see the message counts (ready, unacknowledged, total)
show up with correct values and the deliveries to the consumers as
well.

What is confusing me is that I'm seeing the message counts for all
values go to 0, but the deliveries are continuing to show work for a
good bit of time (several minutes).  So what messages are being
delivered if the counts are showing 0?

And along the same lines, what does it mean whenever I'm looking at
that page while work is being submitted and the ready value is 0, but
unacknowledged and total are growing?

Thanks
Andy