What's the dumbest thing you've done?

[Der_Iron_Chef]

Since people are saying things are slow, might as well throw another question/poll out there.

SO...what's the dumbest thing you've ever done in regards to your aquarium? I'll start.

My sea hare was stuck in the intake of my Seio 1100 pump. I panicked and pulled the pump out without turning it off. It shot a nice stream across the livingroom before I came to my senses. :question: :mrgreen: :twised: :question:

[Phanman]

Well I was so excited when i bought my first amount of LR for the first time I dumped a few large rocks into a FULL tank of water and guess what.... water all over the floor, :lol: .

[Kryten]

How about taking all the sand from someone else's established tank that had been shut down and putting it in mine without rinsing it or anything because I wanted 'live sand'. What a bad smell, for days, major ammonia! Thankfully, I had all my livestock in a different tank during this time or I'm sure it would have been a disaster.

[Phanman]

well i do this on a weekly basis, lol. Choke on salt water and swallowing it sometimes when I suck to hard on the tube when i siphon water during a water change. The best is when i got my gf to do this one time, and boy did i get an ear full, lol. Oh well it was worth it :lol:

[christyf5]

oh god where do I start :rolleyes:

Hmm, 6 hour interceptor treatment to kill an acro eating crab), turned off the return pump (put one colony with an acropora crab in the sump. Forgot to turn off the ca reactor which took water from my tank and put in the sump. Overflowed the sump and reduced the level in my tank by about 6 inches. Killed all the frags I was trying to save from the crab and half a large colony. Never did kill the crab. :neutral:

Adjustments to skimmer made before bed = overflow. I did this about 3x before I finally learned (slow learner).

I think I'll save myself the embarrassment in continuing... :razz:

[Pier Pressure]

We have only been in the fishkeeping hobby for two years and it is so hard to choose what was the absolute dumbest thing. There have been so many!

I think maybe my initial mistake was my worst. I bought a 150 gallon aquarium as a "starter kit" because I had heard the water stayed more stable. We lost many fish before we finally discovered we did not have enough filtration action to properly keep the tank circulated.

Well, go big or go home I always say. So we are now running a Reena XP3 together with a Fluval X5 on that tank.

Saltwater screw ups? Don't get me started!

[Scavenger]

Stupidest thing I've done is get into a hobby that sucks money, time and energy faster than all my pumps put together.

[Delphinus]

Oh so many things. (See my signature !!) Where do I even begin.

I think one of them has to be checking to see if the "thing that was causing an electrical problem" was what I turned off, by sticking my hand in the water. <zap> "Um nope it was something else that's still on! Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow somebody please pull me away from the tank ow ow ow ow ow ow". Now that I think of it it's a little like checking for a gas leak with a match. Yes it can tell you whether there is a problem, yes there are better ways to check.

Other things .. It's always the shortcuts and the temporary things that get you. Or the things you do just before bed.

I don't run a beckett skimmer without a collection cup anymore (because once it's full it stops letting the skimmer produce foam). And if no collection cup I run the skimmer in the sump, so if it overflows it overflows into the tank. Things you learn the hard way!

One horrible mistake I made as a rookie, I put a float valve for topup on my reef, it was just hooked up to my household cold water supply. Never ever hook a topup on a SW up to an infinite water supply! What a mess that was. Of course it failed at night. On a related note, it's amazing what can survive being in cold FW for hours on end (that you think couldn't survive such a thing) and it might surprise you what can't.

One that I still feel really bad about, I moved a cleaner shrimp from one tank to another. I had done this so many times I got complacent about acclimitizing. Well it turns out if your salinity deviates by 0.002 (eg., 1.023 versus 1.025), this will kill a shrimp instantly. And I do mean instantly, you may as well drop them in boiling water. Always drip acclimate even if you think your source and destination waters are "close enough" - they aren't!

I could go on but I'll stop to save what's left of my dignity!

[kwirky]

I made so many mistakes with my first 18g nano reef tank.

I had to do a water change and I didn't want to mix up the saltwater separately. So I added water straight from the tap, dumped in some prime, and put the salt in and watched it slowly mix before my eyes.

3/4 of my frags died :)

I once rearranged my rockwork, then thought "where'd all my snails go?" and then scoured the rock over and found I had most of them compacted on the bottom of most of the rocks...

When I first got my mag 700 I wanted to see how fast it was but I didn't have my tank ready yet. I did it in the bathroom sink. That was a mess :D

[jordsy]

just 3 weeks ago i came up with a design for a trap to catch those bristle worms. I used caulking to seal the holes in my trap but it was type of caulking to seal seams in the walls of houses for looks. It wasnt water proof and it leaked through out my 90 gal tank. I had to change all the water.... not fun

[Phanman]

When I first got my mag 700 I wanted to see how fast it was but I didn't have my tank ready yet. I did it in the bathroom sink. That was a mess :D

LMAO nice....

[Murminator]

I don't run a beckett skimmer without a collection cup anymore (because once it's full it stops letting the skimmer produce foam). And if no collection cup I run the skimmer in the sump, so if it overflows it overflows into the tank. Things you learn the hard way!


I assume you mean the collection cup lid?

I left a frag on the center brace on my tank for a couple days while rearanging.....didn't turn out to well :sad:

[Delphinus]

Nope, I mean the waste collector. I keep calling it the collection cup but I mean the thing the collection cup drains into, that has a ping-pong ball that closes the air exhaust when it fills, which basically shuts off the skimmer.

Best darn thing I ever bought! I can't believe I ran a beckett for like 2-3 years without one, now that I know how awesome they are, I feel like a shmuck for not getting one sooner!

[Der_Iron_Chef]

haha, these are all great, guys. many laughs. and...makes me feel better about my own lapses in judgement :wink:

keep 'em coming!

[Duffer2]

1. Had 110g sump built and I placed it in my basement. Needed to install the pipes from the tank on the main floor down to my basement. Suddenly I found myself standing in my living room, brand new saw in hand, and three massive holes in the new hard wood floor and none of them were any good. Cut three times, measure once.

2. Had a beautiful Tasseled Filefish which was my favorite fish by far, although it tended to hang out near the bottem of the tank. Decided to move some rock around without using gloves. I was lifting one of my larger rocks, something stung me, I decided to then dropped the rock on my BB tank. Curiously I didn't hear the crack sound of rock hitting glass. It was a sad day for leafy...

3. FW 50g tank and the heater was acting funny. The seal between the plastic top and the glass body was loose. So I duct taped it. Decided it would be okay for the weekend. Water was solid green Monday morning, 36 dead fish, half of them on the floor thanks to our cat, the stench was so bad my wife went to her parents place for 2 days. Temperature on the tank was 38 degC. Took 2 years off before I started my next tank.

DUMB!!!!

[Matt]

- I decided my handy-man skills were up to installing my RO/DI... I didn't plan on how tricky that was with 90psi household pressure. Things got a bit wet once or twice.

- I decided to use a long screwdrive to dislodge a snail from an external durso (don't ask me how it got in there). No problem there, but apparently you can't put as much torque on a bulkhead as you'd think (I didn't think I put any). Crack-splash.

- I thought I could outsmart firefishes with egg-crate. Ha. I no longer keep firefish.

[Quagmire]

First time I added a sump,I filled the sump to the top.Then shut off the main pump.:redface: that was good for about 5g on the living room carpet.

I hooked my RODI up to the fauset,turned both taps on full,then went to work.The fitting came apart and flooded the whole place.There was only about 10g of RODI water in my container.Good thing I don't pay for water :mrgreen:

[Canadbis]

Well just a few weeks ago I was doing FW water changes and went up stairs the use the can, got busy with something else and ran downstairs to have to run back upstairs to shut off the water so it would stop overflowing the 75G

and last week I got chatting about the new windows with my wife and the can I use for top up water had fallen over and put 30 or so Gallons onto the floor.

Good thing it was the basement tanks!!

I have officially learned a lesson :)

[Ruth]

Oh the things that I have done. It's actually probably a miracle that I am still alive.
Had a filstar canister filter on my old 75g. and decided to do a water change and general cleaning right after I had my Sunday morning cup of Java. Still in my PJ's and bare feet I niftily completed the water change - cleaned the filter and replaced media - closed it back up - went and grabbed my cup of coffee - and fired it all back up. Did you know that if you don't check those retarded canister filters carefully to make sure that the large O ring is in place it can spray an amazing amount of salt water out onto the floor in an amazingly short period of time - we're talking seconds here? Did you also know that salt water is an excellent conductor of electricity? Things I now know - I can levitate - with a full cup of coffee - and scream a high pitched squeel just like a little girl.

Oh and another one - I was retrieving a coral in my 230g that had fallen to the very bottom in the middle under the center brace. This requires that I stand on a chair and to actually reach the coral I had to turn my body sideways to get the most possible reach. As I was making a quick stab for the coral my long spined urchin appeared out of no where and I rammed one spine right under my middle finger nail and about 3 others in various digets. Like any sane person I immediately removed my hand from the source of the pain very quickly at the same time taking a large step backwards........into thin air.

I could go on but you probably get the picture........some things are just better forgotten.

[MoeReefer]

woke up one morning at about 4 am and decided for some reason to do a water change. Just after i finished adding the replacement water i realized it was from the wrong buckett. 5g of fresh water makes a big difference in salinity when added to a 30 g tank. spent the next hour adding salt to the tank untill proper salinity was reached.

[Joe Reefer]

Thats some good stuff.

It took me at least 10 times to stop unpluging stuff with wet hands.

30 gallons of water spilled on the floor takes longer to clean up than you would think.

[Der_Iron_Chef]

Oh the things that I have done. It's actually probably a miracle that I am still alive.
Had a filstar canister filter on my old 75g. and decided to do a water change and general cleaning right after I had my Sunday morning cup of Java. Still in my PJ's and bare feet I niftily completed the water change - cleaned the filter and replaced media - closed it back up - went and grabbed my cup of coffee - and fired it all back up. Did you know that if you don't check those retarded canister filters carefully to make sure that the large O ring is in place it can spray an amazing amount of salt water out onto the floor in an amazingly short period of time - we're talking seconds here? Did you also know that salt water is an excellent conductor of electricity? Things I now know - I can levitate - with a full cup of coffee - and scream a high pitched squeel just like a little girl.

Oh and another one - I was retrieving a coral in my 230g that had fallen to the very bottom in the middle under the center brace. This requires that I stand on a chair and to actually reach the coral I had to turn my body sideways to get the most possible reach. As I was making a quick stab for the coral my long spined urchin appeared out of no where and I rammed one spine right under my middle finger nail and about 3 others in various digets. Like any sane person I immediately removed my hand from the source of the pain very quickly at the same time taking a large step backwards........into thin air.

I could go on but you probably get the picture........some things are just better forgotten.

Oh my god, Ruth....you had me laughing outloud :lol: :lol:

[Skimmerking]

:lol: First got my 120 going and hoked up the RO/DI unit couldnt figure out why i wasnt getting any water OH YA dumb ass me for got to take the wrapper of the pre filter's ,but guess what it worked great after I took them off...

[adidas]

the dumbest thing i've ever done happened when i was new to the hobby...

my first tank move, I had to store my fish in a rubbermaid container overnight... I just left them in with a heater and the lid on....No airstones, powerheads... my Unicorn tang died :( Stupid!!!!

[adidas]

I mean the thing the collection cup drains into, that has a ping-pong ball that closes the air exhaust when it fills, which basically shuts off the skimmer.


tell me more about this awesome device ;)

[Delphinus]

This is the one I'm using, http://www.jlaquatics.com/phpstore/store_pages/details/skimmers.php?product_ID=ps-pmpw410

There's a larger version made by PM as well, as well as a number of other brands that sell the same thing.

The collection cup drains into this thing. There is an "exhaust" port that has a ping pong ball that floats. If the waste collector fills up, the ping pong ball floats and pushes up against the exhaust port. (It's basically a low-tech "foot valve.") Then air can't escape out, which puts back pressure on the skimmer, and the skimmer can't produce foam against the backpressure. So although the skimmer is still "running" per se, it's effectively "shut down" until you empty the waste collector.

[Der_Iron_Chef]

Very cool. Never seen that before. See, you learn something new every day, even if someone else had to learn the hard way first :lol: :twised:

[justinl]

dumbest thing ive done. HA. well a week ago i got a carpenters wrasse. four days ago it died. I thought nothing of it. today i just noticed that i have a massive ich outbreak. my damsel is freaked enough that i can't get a good look at her. my foxface looks like it dipped its fins in the sugar bowl (on the body there are white spots surrounded by brown flesh... i assume that's bad). my new puffer (two days) has mild ich around its mouth and dorsal fin.

lesson of the day: QUARANTINE THE F***ING FISH!!! i thought i could skimp on it and now it's costing me and my fish.

[Doug]

Been doing this for so long, I have done most of the things mentioned. :lol:

Left the water maker running when going out, despite putting a note on the door to turn it off.

Cranked the skimmer up just before leaving. This was pre-waste collector.

Not understanding the relationship of the alkaline well water and ro with no di resin and the higher levels of alk. in some salt mixes. Took a couple years and several lighting/tank combo,s to figure this one out, despite all my experience. :redface:

Scratching my new starfire 180 cube before water was even in.

Sigh, I could go on. :lol:

[christyf5]

Scratching my new starfire 180 cube before water was even in.


ouch! :neutral:

[BCOrchidGuy]

Oh Holy Hell in a Handbag Batman, lets see, first off I can tell you that keeping a 400 watt metal halide close to the surface of the water isn't always smart, especially when your the type of person (me) who always has a hand in the tank for one reason or another. Good thing is salt water is excellent for cleaning out scorched flesh, and the fish really enjoyed the skin that fell off.
Power bars do NOT belong over an open top aquarium.
Power bars do NOT belong under leaky overflows or area's where I always seem to pour make up water.
Power bars do NOT belong in my home around the aquarium.

Best thing for me is to go to the LFS AFTER my bills are paid and the car is full of gas, not on payday.

Doug

[GrimReefer]

in my first year i bought an alveopora coral without doing any research. it died...

[marcingo]

I did the same thing as you Grim. Mine seemed to be ok until my stupid sleeper goby decided to move it somewhere. Needless to say by the time I found it it was dead in the sand behind a rock.

[EmilyB]

I'm just waiting for 10 more pages and I can say I did all that....:redface: