After 4 months my first disapperance B&W Clown gone AWOL

[lost_at_sea]

so after 4-5 months of perfect operation no losses nothing I lost my first clown today one of the first 2 i put into the tank at the very beginning.

last night I saw only one swim-sleeping and got concerened now 12hrs later he's still not found.  I have no predator fish, 4 hermit crabs, and I think 1 hitchhiker crab from the previous liverock owner who basically lives in a rock and never see him.  I have a goby that shares the rockcondo with him in close proximity so i figured he was probably safe. Previous owner of rock never even knew he existed.

I checked the overflow and sump but can't find anything along with carpets/floor around the tank ... dido.

Can juvenile clowns just drop dead like that? or is it likely this rogue crab secretly hates goby and loves clown?  The ONLY thing i can see in hte tank was about 36hrs ago I saw a stringy like substance almost gelatinous in the corner... i thought maybe the hermits were taking out a snail... could it have been?

anyone thoughts? my other B&W is looking pretty bummed.

[White Lightning]

I just had two clowns jump out of my tank in the last week, but you mentined checking the floor/sump etc... so it can't be that. Perhaps he bit the biscuit and your crabs got to his carcus?

[goldielox]

I have also had several disappearances, a blenny, a goby, an anemone and a sea cucumber.  Most of these appeared healthy and were just gone one day.  I just assumed they died and the hermits did their job in cleaning up.  Although I was surprised they would want to eat an anemone or a cucumber

[SWFitzy]

I would recheck your sump.. my onyx clown loves to jump in the sump... and when he gets in there he cannot be seen... we only found him because we took a net and took blind scooops hoping he was in there. Hope for the best, maybe he is still in there..

[Vincenzo.]

Lol @ rouge crab. What kind? Prolly him, and bigger he gets..bigger fish he'll catch

[gemmate]

 I had the same situation with dissapearing clown recently. As I understood he was seek and had lack of breath. Then he was swimming at the surfice and eventually sucked in in my drain pipe. It has some 90 degrees angles so I reilised he could be there. So I just closed the drain for couple of minutes, let water level to go up and released it. The stream flushed dead body down in the sump.