Can't find pygmy hawkfish

[Reefrory]

Hi I'm new to the reefing hobby and have only had my fluval evo 13.5 up and running for about 4 and a half months. A month ago I bought a pygmy hawkfish which is about 2.5cm, all has been fine with him and very active until yesterday when here in the UK there was a heatwave and when I got in from work my tank was sat at 31 degrees celsius and my hawkfish looked very very unhappy. I added some frozen ro water in a bottle I prepared the day before and eventually managed to bring temp down after couple of hours but since this morning I haven't seen him once and he is always pottering about especially when it's feeding time. I've looked everywhere and he's no where to be found.

My main question is how long should I leave it before I start pulling apart my rocks to find him or his carcass ? I'm really worried about it nuking my relatively small tank.

Any advice would be most appreciated

 

[Sharkbait19]

Welcome to the forum!
Do you have a cleanup crew in there? They can make a fish disappear quite fast.
For me, I’ll give a fish that likes to hide 2 weeks before I’ll call it. At that point, it could likely have already decomposed though. If you can find the fish, do it, but I would tear apart the tank. A small fish like that won’t have a significant effect on the tank that a large water change can’t handle.
Check the floor around the tank and in the filter, it’s possible it wound up in the chamber (happened to me with a gramma and a firefish) or jumped.

 

[Reefrory]

Welcome to the forum!
Do you have a cleanup crew in there? They can make a fish disappear quite fast.
For me, I’ll give a fish that likes to hide 2 weeks before I’ll call it. At that point, it could likely have already decomposed though. If you can find the fish, do it, but I would tear apart the tank. A small fish like that won’t have a significant effect on the tank that a large water change can’t handle.
Check the floor around the tank and in the filter, it’s possible it wound up in the chamber (happened to me with a gramma and a firefish) or jumped.

Thanks for the reply!
I have 4 hermits, 4 nassarius snails, 5 trochus snails, 1 emerald crab but I have no shrimp.
I've checked for jumping as far as I can see it hasn't. I may leave pulling apart the rocks for now if you don't think it should have that much affect on my water that a water change won't fix because I have a bubble tip which is also stressed since the temp changes so I really don't want to disturb it further.
Do you think my clean up crew could deal with the fish If it has died?

 

[Sharkbait19]

Do you think my clean up crew could deal with the fish If it has died?

Definitely. I’ve had fish die and disappear without a trace. CUC, especially hermits, are excellent scavengers.

 

[Reefrory]

Definitely. I’ve had fish die and disappear without a trace. CUC, especially hermits, are excellent scavengers.

Thanks a lot for your help, put my mind at ease. First death of my tank plus I have some nice corals arriving on Friday and didn't want my dead fish to throw a spanner in the works with that aswell

 

[Sharkbait19]

I would just do a w/c before the corals go in to be safe, but otherwise there isn’t much to do. Do what you can to keep the temp down until the heat wave is over.