mistake you dont want to admit

[spongebob lover]

Well let's see .
1- Our water filter used to be under the kitchen's sink, so one day while i was making water for the tank i went to the gym (you know it always takes forever to make water)and so i forgot to put the other tube that throws the "dirty water or waste water" on top of the sink and well we used to live in the second floor, so somehow the water went down to the first floor and ya.... when i came back i had the apartment's manager knocking on my door and telling me that the ceiling of the apartment downstairs was damaged and that i had to get rid of my tank which didn't happen .
2- i made the same mistake after a month (i know i'm a dumbass)
3- i broke my skimmer
4- i broke my water pump
ohh ya and the first time i changed the water by myself, hmm ya... it over flood.
now about smelling things i would have to say that dead xenas smell worse than dead snails

 

[wrightme43]

How about this one. I just did a water change. I drained and shop vacumed the sump, and wiped it out. I filled it back up to the high water line I made before I put in my asm skimmer. I turned on the skimmer and filled the tank back up. Started the return pump and filled the tank and sump untill the sump was filled to the line. Well if you turn off the asm skimmer and the return pump on a system that was set for a prizam pro skimmer. There is more water than the sump can hold. It ran out and all over the floor. It was exciting. LOL Steve

 

[plack]

Before I Placed my vho retro lights in a proper hood I placed them atop an acrylic lid then while getting my sump overflow pump settup I had the pump push too much water into the top tank and had too shut everything off because I just started to see smoke and arcing from the water touching the lighting connecter luckily evrything went ok but that was rather stupid of me not to turn the lights off when testing.

 

[Elmo18]

Wow Paul

I'm glad things are ok

- Elmo

 

[wrighty]

Thus far most have relayed incidents that are embarrasing - I have one that I do not like admiting for moral reasons

About 12 years ago when I was first into reefing in UK I had niot gained enough knowledge really and I now know that during the 1st year i threw out some perfectly healthy soft leather corals because they had closed down for a couple of days - I was ashamed when I thought I lost 1st one I did not mention this to my LFS - if I had it would have prevented me doing same thing on 2 further occasions until I stumbled on fact in a book that they do close and shed skin

Steve

 

[Darthv247]

thought i would add to this old post the biggest mistake ive ever been witness to in my years of reefing.

I worked at a LFS that had about 15 reef tanks in one system wth semi automatic water changes and top off.

Well one morning I come into the store and the reefs are all dead or close to death. Someone left the RO water line wide open to the system. So for about 15 hrs or so the tank was being dilluted with top off water.

Every coral dead complete wipe.

 

[Chichas01]

Ok, here is mine.
Last night I was trying to get ready for dedicating the outlet where my new tank will go to it's own circuit. I cut away the sheetrock in the garage below where I thought the outlet was. My plan was to drill up through the wall right below the outlet box. I missed by 8 1/2". I now have a small hole that comes up through my baseboard and the edge of my floor.
Good thing the tank will be going against that wall and will hide it.
Oh yeah, and I realized that the only thing on the circuit is 2 lights and an outlet. All I really need to do is put in a bigger breaker with a GFCI outlet and I don't need to rewire anything. Good times.

 

[scytale]

My biggest mistake came from buying my first saltwater tank...
(No, not from all the money I've spent on this "hobby" since then... though my wife may disagree! )

I bought my very first saltwater tank on CL--completely stocked--fish, corals, everything.
When I broke the tank down: all the fish went into a cooler and everything else went into this flip-top tubs (rocks, corals, etc.).
But I had 5 tubs and only 4 heaters...
So guess which tub I didn't think to put a heater in... the tub full of the LPS/SPS!!

About 1 hour into tank re-building I noticed the tub was too cold (duh!) So I floated the whole tub of corals in a bathtub of hot water, and then went back to rock-scaping.
But Iknew they wouldn't stay warm, so every 1/2 hour I diligently came back and "warm-up" the bucket by putting more hot water into the bath-tub.

3 hours later, I opened the bucket to move the corals into the tank and found a tub full of stinky liquified corals!--I had literally cooked them.

All the fish, all the live rock, and the 4 tiny corals** that were attached to the live rock all lived--but every other coral died.
I didn't even have time to identify them before the genocide.

 

[scytale]

**But now I have swim against the stream, and post my BEST story!

After the tank was setup and the coral genocide was over--I was too exhausted to clean-up.
So I took all the tubs and just put them out in the garage (note: this was in October, unheated garage).
The tubs were half-full of water, sands, pods, etc.)--nothing valuable.

I left them there for 2.5 days.

On the 3rd day I decided to finally clean-out the garage, so I started dumping-out all of the tubs and rinsing the water/sand/dead pods onto the driveway.

As I was dumping the last tub I saw a bright yellow fleck sliding down the driveway.
So I ran, scooped it up and plopped into into the tank.

It was a tiny frag of a candy cane (just 1 tiny head, at most.)

It survived, and I still have it to this day--he's 15+ heads now, and has always been kinda of "scraggly" looking--but still my "driveway coral", as I call it, is my absolute favorite!

Travis.

 

[dailydriven911]

When I first started in this hobby I used pc lighting (not that there is anything wrong w/ that)

I thought that fake coral looked nice in the tank

My first tank was a 29g eclipse tank

I thought Xenia was the greatest coral

I also was convinced that choc chip starfish were completely reef safe...until about a month later when I noticed it on top of my star polyps and zoos.

I tried putting a pb tank in a 40g (this is a recent mistake)

 

[Chichas01]

I smelled a dead snail. Holly crap ! That was dumber than my floods, purchasing corals during cycling of new tank or grabbing atinic strip as it fell in the tank. The worst is I still never where gloves when handling zoos.

I beat you! I boiled a dead snail to try and keep the cool shell. Oh man that smells up the whole house!!:lol::lol::lol::lol:

 

[Myteemouse]

Biggest mistake.
Got married twice LOL No just jokeing..
Very bad syphon break on kalk reactor= clowdy tank and PH of 9.4
Clown gobys love SPS polyps, as do bi color blenies.
Don't mess with a ATO ball valve when drinking, you wake up to 20 gallons of water in the stand or on the floor.

 

[CarlaW]

Biggest mistake.
Got married twice LOL

Amen to that!!!!

Not joking.