You don't have to pool connections as channels are multiplexed by them.
Things to watch out for:
- opening too many channels - these map to Erlang processes and can overwhelm your server if you go over ulimits - sharing consumer channels between threads - you might see weird behavior (e.g. acking wrong messages etc)
We've built own library/framework for creating resilient consumers, and it enforces mapping 1:1 channels and consumer threads, as well as automatic reconnections and channel clean ups.