Starfish died - Nitrates straight up

[tapeworm]

I checked my levels this morning and my Nitrates were sky high. When I looked in the back of the tank, I found one of my serpent stars has died wedged under my bottoms rocks.
I basically had to take the whole rock formation out in order to get him out.
How do you all deal with this? Let him rot? Have creatures that eat dead bodies? Or do what I did and take the rocks apart?

 

[kogle]

The faster you get something dead out of your tank the less likely it is to have an impact on your water quality.

 

[ophiura]

But what about your ammonia levels? It takes many days after an ammonia spike to get the nitrate from that. I doubt the brittlestar has been dead that long....they 'fall apart" very quickly and there is not a lot of tissue in them to cause much of a blip, let a lone a big nitrate spike. You sure something else isn't going on? very interested to know what all your levels are (ammonia, nitrite and nitrate) and what they typically are.
For something like that, if reachable, I would get it out. If not, I would hope for a good clean up crew, assuming you have a healthy sand bed and stuff going. But really, a serpentstar, IMO, is not a huge source. Not the same as a dead fish or something. Taking all the rocks out can cause an ammonia spike from stirring things up, not to mention potential for rock falls, etc.

 

[rangermonroe]

My guess would be that the dead star was the effect, not necessarily the cause.
Water change is the key now, and get some plant life grrowing to help the nitrate reduction(RIP Bob ).
Doing a 10% change will reduce nitrates 10%, Theoretically. So if you havew 50ppm, change water and you have 45ppm. It's gonna take a while to get them below 10ppm. Algae and other nitrate consuming things will reduce it 24/7

 

[tapeworm]

My Nitrates were less than 10PPM before he died. Looks like he somehow got stuck, thats why he died.
I did a 20% change, seems to stabilize now.

 

[ophiura]

This is wather strange for a brittlestar - to get stuck. I suppose if something suddenly collapsed and fell on him that is one thing. But they will readily break their arms, for example, to get out from under something or away from a predator. What were your nitrate levels when they were really high?

 

[tapeworm]

I think they were around 50, I used one of those dip strips, so dont have an accurate number. I took action of water change before taking an accurate measurement.
What organisms would clean him the quickest?
I have three other stars, peppermints, cleaner shrimp, nassarius snails. Figures one of those would clean him up, no?