Can't find fish in my new tank

[eicca]

Hi all, having a bit of a panicky moment here. I brought home 15 espei rasboras and 3 dwarf otos yesterday. I'm sure that there were 3 otos as I saw them, but I didn't count the rasboras so it's possible the guy miscounted them and gave me fewer. The issue is, I haven't been able to find the third oto in my tank the whole day today, and every time I try to count the rasboras I get 10 or 11. At this point I'm considering taking out all the decorations and plants to figure out if anything happened. Could they have hidden somewhere and will eventually come out or should I do a search and rescue? I have checked the filter, nothing there

 

[sharkweek178]

They're probably stressed out from the move and new environment. Give them a little time to calm down and they'll come out. Taking out everything like that will cause them more stress.

 

[Byron]

I have had similar experiences, most often with catfish that can hide for days. I wold certainly not do any tank disruption. You have new fish that will be severely stressed, and the last thing they need is more stress. It coold finish them off. If you think after a few days that you really did get short-changed, talk to the store. They may or may not do anything, but tearing the tank apart and losing more of them won't help.

Otos are very good at remaining out of sight for days if not weeks. Unless you see all of them at the same time, you never know which otos you may see now and then. I went through this most recently with very small pygmy cories. It was a couple months before I could actually see all of them together.

 

[Sgooosh]

Back when I had bamboo shrimp, the new shrimp would hide for almost a week, and they were very hard to spot, but once they get used to the tank, they are really friendly

 

[eicca]

Thank you all, I just got super worried that they're stuck somewhere or something. I'll give them time to come out, hopefully they'll be okay

 

[eicca]

Update on the missing oto (and in case other people find themselves in the same situation):
Sad news, I found him during my weekly cleaning, he somehow got into the skimmer, and didn't make it. I appreciate your help but do hate myself for not trusting my gut and taking things apart back then when I posted. He might have still been alive.
My two surviving otos will get more friends later this week.

As for the rasboras, I counted 12 in the end, and checked the skimmer and the filter again, so at this point I believe the guy at the store miscounted or misunderstood how many I wanted.

 

[FranciscoB]

Accidental death of small fish being sucked into filter intakes can easily be avoided using pre-filters in all filter intakes. Easy, cheap (free if creative), and problem sold. Many options to explore amenable to just abut any setup. Sorry for your loss.