Okay guys,
We have livestock disappearing! About 6-8 weeks ago a couple of neon cleaner gobies went missing, but we were having an outbreak of ich, so we assumed they died and just got lost in the reef / cleanup crew. I have not seen the small pistol shrimp I put in a while ago, but he could still just be hiding or he could be gone. But now in the past week we are missing a small 3 -4 inch black sand sifting cucumber, a good size cleaner shrimp, and a good size peppermint shrimp.
We have been monitoring the water quality and have not had any issues with anything, so we don't think things have just died and are decomposing in the tank. We have looked everywhere and they are just AWOL. There was a little evidence of shrimp extremities lying about that we had interpreted as moulting, but now...
Most of our fish are not aggressive, with the possible exception of 2 small hawks (a long-nose and a flame). Neither hawk is very big, neither has been aggressive at all over the past 3 months and most of the missing critters were the same size as them. Am I wrong about the hawks, are they the likely culprits? Other inhabitants are: coral beauty angel, yellow tang, lawnmower blenny, yellow watchman goby, 2 maroon clowns, 2 yellowtail damsels and a green mandarin.
The tank is 100G, has been up for about 4 months, and we have about 100 lbs of liverock, so I am worried we may have picked up a hitchhiker (mantis shrimp?) or some other beastie. All the missing livestock have been with us for over three months except the cucumber, which is a pretty recent addition. We've not added any live rock since we set up the tank, but recently added a couple of corals from other MAAST-ards that were attached to pretty good sized rocks.
Any thoughts on what could be going on? We are giving up hope on them just all hiding somewhere together as a big joke on us.
Any help, thoughts, suggestions would be appreciated.



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