Good reef rule...
 

Don't mess with shite, you might break it. Luckily the left side of my rock did NOT collapse, but it was close. Leave. Tank. Alone. :)

oh man have been there buddy i dropped a rock on a bare bottom tank once and literally watched it fall in slow motion i swear i swallowed a lung i gasped so hard lol nothing broke though...thank god:)

Been there done that got the hat and t shirt now my girl just flicks me on the forehead every time I get a crazy notion to muck around in the tank apparently I have not learned a lesson yet!!!!

With my new FOWLR tank I've pretty much cemented the rock together. The cost of hopefully preventing any kind of a collapse is that there's no hope of making adjustments. I will rue this decision on the day that I have to go spelunking to remove fish but hopefully that day will not be too terribly soon. Actually in the meantime it's kind of fun, I made a kind of habitrail structure for my eel by building rock around a network of PVC pipes that poke out here and there, so hopefully this experiment pans out. We'll see.

Back in 2003 ish I was messing with my basement sump when I first set it up. Trying to jam a piece of acrylic in place in the sump before work.

Should have left things alone!

The acrylic slipped. Jambed my top of my right hand against it. Cut through my tendon on the top of my finger. :redface:

I have a cool scar to show for it

Two weekends ago I tried shifting one rock. I swear it must have been the kestone for the whole pile because everything started to wobble. One touch of my finger and one whole side of the pile collapsed! I redid it with a little more structural soundness (and some epoxy).

Oh cmon Guys......thats the first rule of reef keeping isnt it???:razz: DONT TOUCH THE ROCK WORK!:lol:.....Its a scientific fact that when skin touches LR a chemical reaction occurs that changes the molecular structure of the rock, making it impossible to put back the way it was:mrgreen:

Yup, just thought I'd reiterate it for the new people, who, like me, will disregard anyway and knock everything over.
I wasn't even touching rock, just moving an unmounted colony. And now I have to touch it again to fix it, since it shifted 2 inches and may fall over anytime now...

This fact has caused me literally hours of expletive spewing rage.

+1

tried mounting a frag once and they whole thing shifted.... then a nice big rock hit the front pane... yup i changed my shorts shortly after....

I reached in to right a clam last night and a colony fell off the rock (apparently it wasn't attached very well). I'm tempted to just take the colony to the LFS, theres no way I'll get it reattached without causing some sort of issue :neutral:

Oh Brad...haven't we talked about this in the past- Drill your rock! Way more stable and super cool aquascaping;)
Cheers Ronnie

Or better yet, suspend your entire rock aquascape from the ceiling with wires and pullies. Easy access every time. Add a motor and a switch for the WOW factor.

Oh Kien you silly dreamer you =)

WOW factor haha nice :)

I've learned this lesson before... I know it. I abide by it. My goddamned pistol shrimp, however, loves to ignore this rule and screw with every load bearing rock in my tank.

Skin + LR = BAD
Pistol Shrimp + LR = BAD
Skin + Pistol Shrimp = BAD
LR in hand + Pistol Shrimp = Problem solved (I'm kidding... though it's crossed my mind a few times.)

Put it on a timer and you could even simulate a tidal ecosystem. All you'd need would be to catch a couple of seagulls and you'd be set.

Better yet, make it so that it can rotate rotisserie-style, that way you can grow coral on every side of the rocks! Whoa! I just blew my own mind...

OK, wait , wait! getting confused. put the seagul on the rotisserie?
rick

ummm rotisseried seagull...i just had that for supper:):)

funny story when we were kids(i was 10 so dont get mad feather lovers) we would catch caiplin they are little tiny fish that roll onto the beach to spawn by the millions anyways we would catch them and tie them to the line without the hook on my fishing pole and cast the little fish out in the ocean and then a seagull would swoop down and catch the fish and swallow it and then you could fly around a seagull like a kite lol looking back it was totally mean but as a bunch of 10 yr old boys we thought it was hilarious lol ah man to be evil again lol one good pull and you would get your caiplin back (no gulls were harmed in the making of this story)