Fish lost, 99% sure dead

[ickmagnet]

I haven't been able to spot my yellow tang anywhere today and looked everywhere in the tank. He's not a jumper but I searched the perimeter as well. He vanished. I noticed yesterday he was looking a bit sickly so I'm assuming he died and hid in a crevice or something.

My questions is, do I find him and remove him or just let nature take its course? I have a 180g tank with about 200 lb of live rock. It would take up a day moving my rocks all around and re-arranging trying to find the guy. I would obviously do a water change in a few days if I left him.

I have a pretty light bio-load (1 medium size hippo tank, 1 medium green wrasse, 1 smaller naso, 1 maroon clown, a large clam, and a medium rbta). I'm running a protein skimmer as well.

[daplatapus]

How longs the tank been running? Any hermit crabs?

[Aquattro]

Ideally you find him and remove, but I wouldn't take the rock out to do it. I've "lost" large fish in a 180, no real impact. Water change in a couple days is a good idea.

[jason604]

i lost a fish once and the next day i found only a tail, spine, and eye balls left... nature will do its course if it does die

[mohammadali]

i have seen tang jump out , look around your tank behind if u dont find then it might be hiding or dead

[corpusse]

I would try and find him. I just lost my chevron tang who was maybe 7.5" or so. I couldn't find his body at all. He died when I was away. I got home thought hmmm everything is okay I'll do a 50g water change (180 as well) everything will be fine. Nitrates crept higher and higher and there probably was an ammonia spike. I ended up losing a bunch of sps corals plus having to do two 100 g water changes to stabilize things.

[ickmagnet]

Damn! Ya maybe I'll resume the search today.

Tank has ben up and running for about 8 years now but having some issues at the moment with green hair algae.

I did have a large cleanup crew at one point but I believe there is a fish that is snacking on them, green wrasse maybe? Haven't seen a snail or crab in a while.

I used to have a sea urchin that would just sit on top of a dead fish for a few hrs and it would magically disappear. That guy died about a year ago after being in the tank since day one.

Maybe I'll get another urchin.

[WarDog]

Sounds to me like this might be the opportunity to re-scape your display. Not something one wants to do I know, but no CuC, minimal fish, GHA. Just a thought.

[gregzz4]

I'd keep looking
It may have wedged itself somewhere and is waiting to be freed before it starves

[input80]

I'd keep looking
It may have wedged itself somewhere and is waiting to be freed before it starves

+1