Leaving the dead shrimp from my cycle?

[razord]

Hello,
I'm a few weeks into my new tank cycle that has some LR and live sand as well. I tossed a small raw shrimp in for good measure, but I can't seem to find it. I'm wondering how bad it is to leave it in? I can take the rock out and sift through to try to find it, but figured I'd ask first to see if it's worth the effort. (I have more LR coming from TBS soon and if I have to get it out, I will)

Current parameters are:
Ammonia: .50 ppm
Nitrite: 25 ppm
Nitrate: 5.0 ppm

***and yes, next time I'll put it in something to make this easier

Thanks in advance!

 

[Capt_Dan]

I wouldn't worry about it. How long has it been in there? It may have just completely decomposed and again, its not going to hurt a thing. I have lost fish in my tank, and they are in a place I can't get to, so I just left them to be taken care of by the crabs.

 

[razord]

It's been about 3 weeks and my clean up crew is going to be snails only.

 

[scooter31707]

It will created ammonia, but it shouldn't really mess up things. If you cannot find it, just make sure all your parameters are zeroed out before adding any fish. If there is still ammonia in the tank, that's probably a sign the shrimp is still decaying.

 

[Walla2GSP]

I haven't used that method to cycle a tank for awhile, but when I did I just left it till the shrimp was completely consumed by the system then waited a couple days for things to stabilize before stocking. It really shouldn't hurt anything as long as you aren't still seeing large Ammonia spikes throughout the day.

 

[razord]

How long would they generally take to decompose completely? (Approximately)

 

[razord]

Never mind. Just found decaying shrimp. Ammonia is down to .25 today (before removing) as well so I think I'm good.

 

[Tooboot]

Give it a few days to get the ammonia down to 0, then add a bit of pure ammonia and check 24h later, if ammonia is back to 0 after 24h you have cycled. I also used the shrimp method (in a cheesecloth bag I made), checked parameters, then added some ammonia to be sure the tank had cycled.