Yesterday I added my frist animals to my 24 gallon nano: cleaner shrimp, fire shrimp, 4 hermits, and 5 snails. Unfortunately, the fire shrimp didn't survive - he was acting a little bit wiggy during drip acclimating and when I released him into the tank, he fell into the rocks and never came out.
Anyway, last night when the MH lights went off and the moonlights came on, the fire shrimp was no where to be seen. So I went and got a small flashlight and started looking around for him: finally I saw his little carcass wedged between two pieces of rock at the very bottom of the center of the live rock structure.
Getting his little corpse out of there involved essentially ripping the reef apart.
What I'm wondering is this: how far do you go to remove the deceased from your tank? I could do this deconstruction because my reef is small and there are no corals yet. In time, moving things around will become more problematic. I felt that getting him out was probably necessary - he was not a small shrimp. At some stage, if something is MIA and assumed dead... do I watch ammonia and rely on the cleanup crew to take care of it?
Anyway, last night when the MH lights went off and the moonlights came on, the fire shrimp was no where to be seen. So I went and got a small flashlight and started looking around for him: finally I saw his little carcass wedged between two pieces of rock at the very bottom of the center of the live rock structure.
Getting his little corpse out of there involved essentially ripping the reef apart.
What I'm wondering is this: how far do you go to remove the deceased from your tank? I could do this deconstruction because my reef is small and there are no corals yet. In time, moving things around will become more problematic. I felt that getting him out was probably necessary - he was not a small shrimp. At some stage, if something is MIA and assumed dead... do I watch ammonia and rely on the cleanup crew to take care of it?