Advice? Leaving death in your tank?

If you have crabs as part of your clean up crew you may want to leave the shells. If they have some available to swap out they may be less likely to kill the snails that you have alive in order to use their shells. I personally have gone away from crabs for that very reason. With no crabs involved I like to take the old shells out. I personally also like to take out coral skeletons. I don't like the aesthetics of it. They say you shouldn't take out the skeleton of a plate coral though because it will sometime bud or sprout a new one. That's my 2 cents anyway.

 

I definitely remove old shells, but after they've sat for a while. It a snail dies, I'll usually leave it in the tank, as my bristleworm population seems to love it. After a bit I'll take it out. As for coral skeletons, they get removed for sure. Dead corals just look ugly to me.

 

I've had some frags die (a few acros & a favia or two) and then I just treated them as if they were still alive, cleaned the algae off of the skeletons with a brush, and after some time-- they actually came back! I used to pitch a coral after I saw it bleached and covered in algae, but not any more!

So I'd say I will keep them for a time, but only for pragmatic purposes.