The meleagris I have currently is very hardy! Last month I decided to tear dowm my 2.5 feet setup to install a black acrylic at the back of the tank.
I caught all the fishes except for this one as it buried herself in my 2 inch sandbed. What I did was just scooped the sands into the pail. I then fixed my tank and let the silicone cured for 3 days. When I re-setup my aquarium and started pouring salt water, this fish just suddenly appeared but buried herself in the sand again. There was no way I could catch her without filtering the sand so I just let her stay during the cycling. She survived the cycling, more than a month , and now still looks very healthy, coming out in daytime and disappearing at nighttime.
Imagine this fish survived in a pail of wet sand without food.