Well, it was a very distressing lunch break. I immediately started doing my search for hatchlings and the first one I found was easy to find - out in the open and lifeless. My heart sunk - I was SO not ready for that. (I had finally stopped worrying about that every hour of the day) I tapped him with a pipette and got no reaction.. he just swayed in the current. Totally white/translucent. I panicked and frantically tried to find some of the others to see if this was an isolated case or if I had somehow killed them all! Luckily I quickly found another who looked fine, and then another. So back to the lifeless one I went, and sucked him up with a turkey baster. I laid him on a piece of paper towel so that I could take some close-up photos of him before disposing of him and through the zoom lens I thought I saw a tentacle move! Not being sure (but hoping like hell) I quickly put him back in the water. He fell to the bottom of his trap and didn't move. I went about looking for the others and trying to feed them frozen mysis. I only found a total of four hatchlings so, again, one was missing in action. Apparently there is one (at least one) that breaks out of his trap and enjoys having run of the tank and hiding in the rock.
I tested the water and found it was .027. Probably not a big deal, but I siphoned out a gallon and put in a gallon of fresh RO/DI. I checked the lifeless one again, still hadn't moved. I went about tending to my other pets and checked him one more time before I left for the office. I THINK, if I look with a magnfiying glass, that he MIGHT be breathing. He also seems a tad darker in color than he was when I first found him.
I'm wracking my brain to figure out what caused his death/illness and my thoughts are:
1. Something about the water change didn't agree with him
2. He hasn't been eating and is dying of starvation
3. He got injured/crushed during the rock movement last night
4. He got attacked by one of his siblings (The breeder he was in was inhabited by another hatchling when I got home.) If there was a fight, would the "loser" be eaten or do they just fight for territory and then victor leaves the opponent to rot?
Don't know what to think, but am very distressed. I was a wreck worrying that I'd lose one the first few days I had them but I had just stopped obsessing over that.
Sue