Epilogue and Lessons learned:
yesterday evening my wife pointed out that she had noticed that the blue striped Malawai Cichlid was chasing the other fish around. Now this had been predicted by an earlier post but I had denied it because I hadn't actually seen this behavior manifest in the tank before.
Upon closer inspection I noticed two fish had vanished, a small neon tetra and a larger guppy. Alarmed I opened up the Fluval 405 and nothing was there.
With the Beta also ripped to shreds so badly it was floating on its side unable to swim any longer, I decided to remove the Cichlid for good. Thus, began a two hour odyssey to get him out. He was the fastest and largest in the tank approx 2 inches long. I had to uproot all my plants and remove 75% of the water and add glass partitions to finally corner him and get him out. What a horrific mess!
Finally adding back all the water and plants, which survived surprisingly well, the tank is happier and back to normal now and BONUS Nitrates are at 0.00pm this am. I guess some good came out of all this afterall. I never found the neon, not a trace! Found the guppy chewed up to bits, poor thing. Total newbie lesson learned unfortunately at the loss of some fish. I will never get those two and a half hours back, my Havanese Silk dog is getting jealous of the time spent away from her!
