I finally realized yesterday morning that I hadn't fed my new seahorses at their normal feeding time (I was about an hour late) and I scurried to thaw out their frozen mysis shrimp cube. As I waited for the cube to thaw in a small bowl of their tank water, I looked for all 4 of my new fish. I only found 3. Not unusual, really. Seahorses like to try to hide and camouflage themselves when they sleep. I started slowly pouring in their food and watching for the 4th seahorse to rise up from the depths of the rocks or something but she never appeared. I looked down in the rocks from all angles, no fish. I had the idea that maybe she somehow went down the drain but couldn't figure how she could have since the drain opening is right at the top of the water and she would have had to throw herself over the edge by coming slightly out of the water. Well, it was worth a look. I opened the cabinet below to see the sump but the light hadn't come on yet. Darn it, now I have to find a flashlight. I can't find anything since I had to pack up all our belongings into boxes and move them to the basement for the carpet layers last week. After a half an hour of looking and finding no sign of her, I woke my husband. He did the same things I did. Look into the rock, around the rock, he even reached in with his extra long rubber glove and moved the rock. She wasn't underneath it, either. She had completely disappeared. He came to the same conclusion I did and reached for a flashlight to look in the sump. He somehow found one immediately, looking in the same place I looked and found none. We looked together in the sump and as he was getting up to put the flashlight away, I thought I saw something funny. I told him to bring the flashlight down again and then I saw her! She was laying flat and immobile at the back of the drip tray that the drain empties onto. My husband reaches in to take her out and dispose of her, but her tail curls around his finger as he lifts her out! She somehow survived the trip! He put her immediately back in the tank where she swam to her mate and wrapped herself around him for comfort. We'll watch her carefully for a while, but there was no visible signs of damage to her. This morning she was well and ate heartily with the rest. What an ordeal!
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