mistake you dont want to admit

[lizardarm]

despite the common (and sensible) mantra of "start with the largest tank that you can"
i converted my 46 bow from fresh to salt instead of my 72 bow.
took about six months before i was moving the reef into the 72 and buying new lights, new skimmer, new pumps, new just about every damn thing else that wasn't going to be "big" enough for the larger tank.
insert head here> )(

 

[sryder]

i had a 55 with all small fish and inverts. I put in a 6" lion fish only to come home to only a lion fish. I told my kids that there sally lightfoot crab had died which realy upset them, only to find out he only molted. .. the things i have never done( knock on wood) 1) fallen into my tank. no matter how deep it was. 2) been attacked by a moray eel. 3) never fought off bubba the 22 pound lobster. 4) I never lost a fight with a coral and ended up w/ stitches in my head. 5) saying something that could end up on the internet for everyone to see. (priceless)

 

[Elmo18]

Here's a new one..doh

while harvesting small hatchlings from tank, i shut off return pump, forgetting to make sure the sump can handle it...

yes.... another minor FLOOD.

- Elmo

 

[Beckmola24]

I shocked myself the other day while barefoot and standing in a little water.... It was early morning and I wasn't thinking at all... My husband won't let me forget that one

I also put 2 ocellaris clownfish from petco into a 5 gallon eclipse tank after being told by one of thier employees that it would make a great nano....They also told me that dead coral skeletons were perfect to aquascape the tank with. 1 week later I bought a 12 gallon tank and some live rock for them and 2 weeks after that a 20 gallon and then a CPR skimmer and even more live rock.

I bought a 1 in hermit for the 5 gallon to go along with the clowns and no one at petco told me that they molted.... I saw the molt thinking the hermit was dead and took it out of the tank immediately, but wanted to save the shell for another hermit. I put it in my "fish" cabinet and the next day I opened the cabinet to find a dead hermit in his shell.

My last thing is really really really stupid I had just bought a new hob sponge filter for my 20 gallon (before the skimmer) and I misread the carbon packet directions.... It said remove outter wrapping... Well I though the plastic didn't count as the outter wrapping (not sure where I had left my BRAIN that day) and I removed the netting around the carbon and put it loose into the filter and when I turned it on I got a TON of carbon floating and circulating around in my tank. It took me like 6 hours to clean out the crumbs and my sand always had a few remnants of black carbon in it. I might win the prize for the stupidist mistake here... My husband also doesn't let me forget that one

 

[bradreef]

Now I know everyone out there isn't perfect. lets hear some more entertaining things.

 

[wrightme43]

Here are a couple more of mine. I kept adjusting the float valve up to get more rodi water in my 44 gallon brute trash can. Well, there is a point where the can fills up before the float shuts it off, because it hits the lid of the tank. Lucky it was in the garage big flood. Another one, I left the flush valve on my rodi unit on for 3 days and had a hell of a water bill. Steve

 

[NaH2O]

Alright alright....I was using Joe's Juice and the syringe got clogged up. I was trying to squirt it into a towel, when the clog finally broke free and the juice came flying out.....hitting the towel, and splashed up into my eye. I ran over to the sink and began rinsing my eye (not sure if any went into or just on it...no burning). The thing that sucked the most, and I wanted to call the maker.....no ingredients on the bottle. Of course, this was to protect Joe's pending patent, but what about my eye???? Good thing it wasn't a call to poison control or an emergency room. "what are the ingredients?" Ummm...I don't know....they aren't listed. grrrr.

 

[wrighty]

Mines a pales in comparison to last one but it invloves getting 3 simple steps in the wrong order
Step 1 - Extrenal filter - remove plug or switch of power
step 2 - shut off taps
step 3 - remove motor unit to clean the filter medium

I went from step 1 to step 3 - Looked for someone to blame - and watched as salt water poured all over the floor

It took about a gallon of leaking water for me to realise I needed to support motor unit in one hand while turning taps off with other

 

[Haole]

During one of my first attempts at dripping Kalkwasser, I used to use a jug with the entire top half of it cut off. I sat it on top of the lid of the open canopy just like the one shown in the picture. Well, just after setting up the drip rate one night, I was looking at the overflow on the other end of the tank and decided that it needed to be fiddled with so I lifted up the open lid and consequently knocked over the kalk jug with half of the contents going into the tank, and the other half splashing all over the side of the tank and the floor. Doh!! Short term memory.... Gets me every time!

The other thing is giving bradreef a hard time about his mug shot when I don’t even really know the guy. (Head down, kick’en the dirt.)

 

[FishyinKy]

Gawd when I even think of all the mistakes my mind screams in panic but the most recent one. . . I have a lot of urchins in my tank and I'm always warning everyone to be careful of the urchins. Well this particular tank is three foot tall and has a lot of live rock and lots of turbo snails that like to knock things over. Well I have to use a step ladder to even reach into the tank so I crawled up on the top step and reached way down deep for the coral they had knocked over and grabbed hard and grabbed one of the urchins instead. I gotta tell you that hurt soooo bad. Lol Man I've done some dumb putzy things in my tanks.

 

[bradreef]

Got to be careful of urchins and lionfish.

 

[cutndrag2]

I have one similar to Nikki. i had been in the hobby for about three months and couldn't get my calcium right, so one day before work i decided to test it using the Red Sea test kit. After adding part A, i went to add part B and nothing would come out. So I squeezed really hard and the entire top shot off in to the test tube. The liquid came up directly into my right eye.In a panic I look at the bottle and the first word I see is CORROSIVE! ran to shower and rinsed it out. We immediently went to the eye doctor, and they said I burned three layers of my cornea off got a neat little eye patch but declined on pain meds cause it didn't hurt. Less than two hours later I am doubled over in pain and can't look at any light and cant even shut my eye with out horrible pain. So I went to the local bar with friends and had quite a few shots.

No Permanent Damage, Patrick

 

[bradreef]

wow that sounds painful. better be more careful myself.

 

[jlehigh]

The squirts to the eye would freak me out... so easy to do too..

OOOkay I forgot my incident that sent me to the ER for a check-up... I had been moving acros around in my 46gal about 2years ago and many of them slimed on my fingers. Once I was done I simply wiped my hands off on a rag and began cleaning the outside of the tank. A few minutes into it i saw some salt creep for which I LICKED my thumb to get it off.... MORON!!!

Within minutes I felt like I was having an anxiety attack, though couldn't figure what the hell was going on! THEN it donned on me... I had licked my friggn thumb.. So after 15minutes my breathing was forced, my haeart rate and blood preasure was through the roof so into the car at 11:30pm I went with the wife to the ER. We got there about 35 minutes into the episode and my vitals were returning to normal...

That really sucked!

 

[reedman]

Did a water change once and managed to somehow lodge 3 pieces of pure white aragonite in my eye. Didn't notice it for a few days...just thought my eye was irritated by alergies or something. Finally went to the doc and had them look. They numbed the eye, got out the tweezers, and pulled the pieces out. Not fun, but no permanent damage

 

[bc_slc]

The day I was tearing down my tank before we moved up here from Denver I was doing a ton of work on the tank. We basically packed 1000lb of rock, sand and buckets with fish and water into my trunk of my car. I am cleaning out the sides of the tank, pulled out rock etc. I tip up my ghetto canopy, which has 4 sets of VHO's attached and a heavy reflector, I reach into the tank, bump the canopy back OFF THE LID OF THE TANK, the top comes crashing down closed, and the only thing to stop it...is my face. The movers were coming, my cheek was cut almost clean through, and I had to go to the ER and get stitches. Painful.

 

[bradreef]

stitches and trips to the ER. More stories guys.

 

[soldefender]

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.

 

[big t]

I always smell the dead snails for some reason, and it almost makes me throw up every time. LOL. The stupidist thing that I have done so far is to make a pretty good flood right after I made a pretty good flood. I spilled all kinds of water into my stand and ended up having to remove the sump to dry it all up underneath it. I swore that I would put some silicone to seal it in asap. Well right after I got it back up and running I was doing the vacuum from the top -thru the filter sock - into the sump thing, and for some reason I did it w/ the sump off. Ya it quickly flooded again badly and guess what? Out w/ the sump again to dry out underneath. It was just silly. I siliconed it up before I even added water the second time I have also made a lot of dummy mistakes w/ diy projects because I get so excited to get a new toy going that I mickey mouse everything and rush just to see it work, pretty silly becuase I always have to back up several steps and do it right.

 

[Scooterman]

Water, water & more water, seems like it gets everywhere, I keep towels designated for my aquarium use, I have several on hand always. I don't know how many times I spilt water where I know it went under my sump, maybe I should run a bead of silicone on the outside of the sump to the stand floor. LOL