In this thread post your most idiotic reefing mistake

[trilinearmipmap]

I have made a few dumb moves over the years, typical scenario is come home, tired, lots of stuff going on at home, decide to do X but not thinking ahead, then things go wrong. Well today I pulled a real good one so I thought I would post it here in the hopes that others had done something even stupider so I wouldn't feel so bad.

I have been experimenting with brine-shrimp growout. Researching the different feeds it looks like yeast, spirulina, and various flours were good choices to feed growing brine shrimp. One site I found on the web recommended blending up the feed in a blender for 2 minutes to micronize it. So I thought to save time I would blend up some spirulina powder, whole grain flour, and yeast along with some water, and store it in the fridge.

This concoction was kept in a capped bottle in the fridge for a couple of days and today was the first day to feed a new hatch of brine shrimp. As soon as I uncapped the bottle, gooey dark green spirulina mix spurted out over the ceiling and carpet. I had not forseen that the yeast would ferment the flour mixture producing a build up of pressure from the CO2 gas.

If anyone knows a good way to get rid of spirulina stains on a plaster ceiling let me know. Please feel free to post any similar idiotic moves that you may have done.

[fiorano]

... When i first started I didnt understand how important a consistent water level was for skimming. So my skimmer always overflowed so i thought it was a pos ... then i bought a bubble king and learned that little tidbit soon after hahaha. pretty pricey learning experience

[mark]

Tank is upstairs, sump/return pump in basement and in the basement ceiling there's a return air grill. When doing a water change I'll siphon out about 20g from the tank leave the siphon going, go downstairs turn on the return pump for a bit to top the tank back up. Rather than heading right back up once, got doing something then noticed water streaming out of the duct into the basement. The hose had come out of the tank, landed on the floor and siphoned water out of the change barrel. Water flowed along the floor, under the baseboard into the joist space then onto the basement.

Was only a few gallons but it sure seemed a lot more when spread over two floors. Lucky return air duct was there though since water didn't pool so no damage. Lesson learned, secure all the hoses and a shop vac can be a reefers best friend.

[lastlight]

Loose hose pops off pump and something shorts out leaving me in a dark fish room. With saltwater blasting all over me I fumble with a powerbar and get thoroughly zapped.

5 cent tie wrap kept the hose secure in the future.

[Dearth]

I've made plenty of mistakes that are idiot worthy ...one of my more recent ones was I was in a rush was preparing to clean my skimmer cup grabbed it then proceeded to dump it all over the carpet because I was in a rush and dropped the cup. My carpet cleaner got a good workout that day

[Coral Hoarder]

OK I have a few but thies are the worst you know when you do a big say 40% water change and your heater is out of the water well anyway it got realy hot and when I poured water back in the tank the heater cracked this has hapend 3 times yea u think I would learn the first time lol

Second worse was when I put 3 bags of fish and corals in my hang on the back fuge and it raised the Water over the top and one got stuck in the return hole and blocked it so basicky within 2 mins my power bar was kiled as 2-4 galons of water was poured onto the carpet lol

[kwdrysdale]

My biggest and dumbest mistake cost me a fish. :( I had a pair of clowns in quarantine and one had visible signs of ich. Our QT is a 20 gallon tank but we didn't fill it full - only used 15 gallons. So...time to treat for ich. I dose for 20 gallons. I realize it right away but just leave it. Do a water change the next day before a second treatment. Instead of measuring, I do drips - a different way to measure and outlined in the instructions. The ACTUAL instructions is ten drops per gallon, but for some reason my head converted that to one drop per gallon. I kept dosing and doing water changes as I watched the one clown get worse. I finally realized what was going on and started dosing correctly but it was too late. :( Lesson learned and I read dosing directions almost EVERY time I dose anything. :)

[BMW Rider]

Getting into this hobby in the first place. All the other dumb stuff is a direct result of that decision.

[FishyFishy!]

I've been lucky enough to not have anything crazy. BUT

I have overflowed numerous buckets by not having an auto shut off with float valve on RO units. Also spilt many many gallons of water not securing syphon hoses to the tank properly.

The worst was building my 187. First, I spilt an entire large can of PVC glue onto my new carpet. That sucked. Goodbye carpet. Then when I turned on the dart return pump for the first time, I had two (not one.. two haha) of the loc-line return lines pointed up over the rim of the tank. Not only did I get a mouth full of water as soon as I stood up, but there was a tonne of water on the floor, AND in a race to point them back down I knocked the 72" 12 bulb constellation fixture into the water. Luckily I had a GFCI plug in, it snapped before anything was harmed. I let the light dry out for a few days and it worked great after!

[peterss1975]

Went on vacation in Mexico and while there I checked my controller and noticed my sump was really low. so I decided to turn on my Top off pump. All was good, filled up enough where I was happy. Went to turn it off and lost my internet connection. I scrambled to turn get reconnected so I could shut it off. I finally was able to reconnect to shut it off but had no idea how much flooding happened until I got back home. Luckily I got and no flooding at however I couldn't fit another drop of water in sump.

[Magickiwi]

My biggest mistake wasn't really my mistake exactly. I simply listened to the dude at the LFS when he said a green brittle star was reef safe. Well by reef safe he meant it wouldn't eat corals, what I THOUGHT he meant was that it would co-exist without harming anything in my tank (Normally what is meant). Several fish later I finally caught the bastard in the act and then had to take apart large portions of my rock work to get the big sucker out.

Lesson learned: People at the LFS aren't necessarily speaking in the same context as you so do your own research and trust nothing unless you've verified it with a valued source.

[xenon]

About 6 years ago, I attempted to QT my fish with ich in hyposalinity (1.009).

I dropped them from 1.026 to 1.009 properly (3 points per hour).

I noticed the fish not doing very well once I got to 1.009 so I quickly added some salt to the water and they bounced back. The following day I got some proper calibration fluid and I was off my 3 points. What I thought was 1.009 was actually 1.006.

Lesson learned. :mrgreen:

[Madreefer]

My biggest mistake wasn't really my mistake exactly. I simply listened to the dude at the LFS when he said a green brittle star was reef safe. Well by reef safe he meant it wouldn't eat corals, what I THOUGHT he meant was that it would co-exist without harming anything in my tank (Normally what is meant). Several fish later I finally caught the bastard in the act and then had to take apart large portions of my rock work to get the big sucker out.

Lesson learned: People at the LFS aren't necessarily speaking in the same context as you so do your own research and trust nothing unless you've verified it with a valued source.

I think this is the biggest mistake we all make especially when starting out. It took me a couple of years to wise up and stop listening to guys at LFS

[Parker]

Don't set a 400w fixture on your center brace.

http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa180/RParker_07/Tank%20Build/IMG_1987.jpg (http://s200.photobucket.com/user/RParker_07/media/Tank%20Build/IMG_1987.jpg.html)

[trilinearmipmap]

OK mine looks like the 3rd worst mistake after the cracked centre brace and the light fixture dumped in the tank. Now I don't feel quite so stupid.

[monocus]

putting a helfrichi gobie in my tank.my male bird wrasse had a $140 lunch in less than 10 seconds

[Coral Hoarder]

O ya I forgot one I put my 3 250 watt mh fixtures on the glass had a fish splash the glass and broke

[kengeroo]

got really lazy one day,,, added salt directly to my tank,,, straight into a clam..... :(

[shrimp]

Might as well post mine.
Years ago, I was doing a tank move and fished out all my fish to a 5 gallon pail. As the move was taking longer than expected, after some time I figured that the water must have cooled off too much, so I decided to place a heater to warm up the water a bit.
Even though I had the thermostat set to turn off when the water would heat up to the desired temperature, I "boiled" all my fish as I did not have a small circulating pump in the bucket.
It still pains me to think about those poor fish that day, even though it happened so many years ago :(

[fishoholic]

I was messing around in the sump and must of bumped the phosban reactor. Unfortunately I didn't realize I had and the hose came loose causing water from the sump to leak out onto the floor. Got home from work the next day to a soaked basement carpet. At first I thought the sump had cracked and was leaking until Doug found the hose disconnected.