Missing fish

One of my J. ornatus has gone missing. I haven't seen him or her for a few days and I am not sure whether I should tear the rocks apart to find it or not.
I did a water change on the weekend and I don't think I sucked it up with the Python but I haven't seen it since.
I figure there are a couple scenarios.
1. It went down the drain...unlikely.
2. It's dead somewhere...very likely.
3. There's eggs somewhere and it is staying tight to them and not coming out to eat or show itself...Does this happen?
If #3 is the case, I don't want to tear the tank apart and risk breaking any bonds etc.
I did an ammonia test and it is 0 but I'm not sure how long it would have to be dead before a spike.
So, do I tear it down, leave it alone and just watch the water quality or just stop worrying?
Thanks
Graham

pray for 3... prepare for 2...

hmm maybe leave it a few more days to see if it does come out.

i would personally look for it...i know i would want to know asap what happened to it

Graham,

I have had some come go missing I never found.
I personally would wait it out for a few days.

Good luck buddy.

Did you check under and behind your tank? maybe it jumped out?

Thanks.
I checked around the tank. It has a lid and there isn't much room but I will look closer.
The one area it could be is in the canister return tube. I put a guard on the intake but the outflow is open because I didn't think that something would go up it or if it did, it would come back out. I hid tubing inside my background so maybe it decided it was part salmon and swam upstream.
I will wait a bit and keep watching ammonia levels.
Graham

Any sign of the missing fish yet?

Nope, I am afraid he's most likely swam off to the great aquarium in the sky. Without tearing everything apart, I am going to assume he has met his demise somewhere in the tank. There's no change in ammonia etc. but when I do my water change this weekend, I will poke around a bit and see what I can find.
Thanks for asking.

Did you ever find the fish? I once found a tetra just hangin out in my HOB.

I needed to do a major cleaning which was over due so yesterday I tore the rocks down, checked out all the filter lines, the HOB, took all the substrate out of the filter, cleaned the sponges out, even blew out all the lines to see if I could find anything at all that remained of the missing fish. Nothing. I know by now he'd be dissolved into a pulpy mess but I thought I'd maybe see some sort of organic material that looked like the remains. But, he's truly gone. One of those little mysteries of life I guess.

What is funny is that the big Julie who's been bossing everyone around didn't react well to the tear down. There's been a complete roll-reversal and the former victim is now the aggressor. Funny how something that simple can change the fish's personality so much.

I just rinsed the main filter sponge out in the sink. The reason for all this was because the filter was making a lot of noise. Seems that the filter was completely plugged. I didn't actually wash out the filter media, just dumped it out, cleaned the filter (with tap water) and then put it back together. Added de-chlorinator with my water change. Hopefully I didn't screw it up too much.
The reason I tore it all down was because I was worried that the missing fish had gotten stuck somewhere but like I said, the noise turned out to be a very dirty filter. I didn't clean it when I set it up on this tank because I wanted to introduce bacteria at the time. I figured that there was enough growing on the back of the tanks and rocks to handle the 4 julies so I could clean the filter.
LIke I said, I didn't go over-board rinsing the media or anything, just the one filter sponge.
I'll go for smaller changes and see what happens.
Thanks

I hope you still have a female in your ornatus group because they breed very easily. I had the ornatus in a small 29g tank ones and they breed like crazy. One of few Tangs I ever had. Very beatiful fish.

I think I have two females and two males but I really don't know. They haven't spawned yet nor really formed a recognizable pair. I thought they were on that track when I got them but not much has happened.
Before, the big one that I think is male spent time between the two rock piles and chased off the other bigger one, the suspected second male. Now, the second one is chasing the bigger one around and the "females" are back to their piles.
Who knows.=