dead watchman

I believe my yellow watchman goby is dead, last time i saw him was when i took him out of the filter area, and he looked really really really beat up, his eyes were pure white and gills were ripped, and he was moving. So i put him in the tank which was 2 weeks ago. And for 2 weeks I have not yet to seen a trace of him. My guess would be he is dead somewhere in the rocks. Do i need to remove all the rock work and try to find him and get it out?
Or can he just be my snail/crabs food?

 

I think it depends on the cleanup crew you have, if it's big enough to take care of the deceased fish before there's a spike in your chemistry. Trying to find it is the way I'd go in that size tank, but that's just me. Sorry for your loss!

 

damn that sux if he did die, if you have a decent cuc they will take care of the body, test every other day for ammonia and nitrate see if it spikes. If so then start to look for him, if not then the cuc did there job

 

Sounds like he was pretty beat up, if he hasn't appeared after 5 days I would assume he died and as it has been 2 weeks I would bet there isn't much left of him. You could try and have a look for him, but bacteria in a tropical marine tank are pretty fast acting on organic material. It only takes around 3-4 days for bacteria to feed on most of the tissue from a fish. If you have a CUC in there as well I doubt you would find anything. I would monitor water parameters and if you don't already, make sure your skimmer is skimming effectively.