Decaying Brittle...

[eightbitpotion]

So my tank is going on two months now (46g), and when I got my live rocks about a week and a half or two weeks into it, I had three brittle star hitchhikers. Needless to say, they didn't live, but they lived for almost two weeks. Two of them died one night and apparently just crawled out onto the sand bed, but the third star is gone, and I'm assuming that it's hidden deep in one of the live rocks, and probably now decaying. The ammonia has spiked needless to say, and I'm not sure what I should do about it.

How long should this take to finish? Removing the live rock isn't an option, since they are expensive, and it's a really huge one that it'd have to be in. I figured the decomposition phase should take less than a month, but honestly I haven't the slightest idea. Any thoughts on this would be highly appreciated.

[eightbitpotion]

Anyone?

[CutthroatKid]

Is there any other livestock in there?

[eightbitpotion]

Banded coral shrimp, a damsel, and two really tiny hermits.

[CutthroatKid]

Well if you don't want to remove the rocks, then the only thing you can do is a large water change. Ammonia is very toxic, and high levels will kill the damsel (not sure about inverts). so either do water changes to keep the ammonia down or put the animals in a different tank and let your current tank work it's self out...