OMG Moments of Stupidity...

[str8juizy]

Well, after reading some stories on King_Neptune's thread I thought it would be fun AND educational to have a thread that tells of all the stupid things we have done to either cause our tanks to crash or almost/could have crashed... Hopefully this will give us a chance to feel better about some of the stupid things we have done by seeing we are not alone AND learn how to fix it... Let's hear some stories!

 

[str8juizy]

So, since I started the thread, I'll be the first to start My moment of stupidity is as follows... A few weeks ago my 9yr old daughter woke up in the middle of the night sick and instead of heading for the bathroom she walked down the hallway into the living room, throwing up all over the walls & floors. I spent the next 2 hours SPRAYING cleaners all over the place... floors, walls... same room as my tank. I was 1/2 asleep when I was doing this and it did not even enter my mind that the chemicals from the sprays might get into my tank! I think the only thing that saved me was the fact that my cooling fan was off and I was not using any aerosal spray cleaners. I almost gave myself a heart attack when I realized what I was doing! My house is full of girls (my poor hubby is the only man) & I even have a sign at the end of the hall that says "No Perfume or Hairspray Past this Point!" Thank goodness the only thing I had to clean up was barf... it could have been a tank disaster!

 

[Krish]

I made my own return nozzle that sat half way down the tank pumping from my sump and tried it out. I turned off the pump and went out. My wife called me to tell me that half of my tank (90 gal at the time) was on the floor. Apparently I forgot to drill a hole to break the siphon and I back siphoned half of the tank.

 

[Krish]

Oh...Another story. I sold my tank and I don't have one now . Pretty crappy!!! I need to get a new tank! This sucks not having one!!!

 

[mojoreef]

Wow just to many to tell over the years.

> Pulled down a double 400 watt MH ballast and dropped it in the sump??? nothing died though just the ballast.

> While laying on top of the tank, because I had to place a coral on the very point of an overhang I fell in the tank upside down, eventually lost air and had to do the panic move to get out, lost about 5 corals in the process???

> While showing off my 22 inch 2.5 inch think moray ell and how well it feeds, it swallowed my finger. I tried pull it off but no go, removed from the tank and tried to pull it off...but no go.. all this time it was already through my skin and beginning to carve its name into my bone....So I gently placed it under my shoe.....and well you can guess the rest.


theirs a couple for ya.


Mike

 

[trido]

I took my kalk mixer off line to work on it one day and ended up slightly breaking it. After about eight hours the repair was done and I put it back in place and didn't think twice. I should have thought hard about that because the sump had evaporated near three gallons of water and the ATO was working hard. Of course the Kalk mixer went into stir mode as scheduled and I dumped near three gallons of kalk paste into the system and didnt notice until the whole tank was so milky I couldn't see my Naso tang unless she was touching the glass. I added several cups of vinegar to lower the Ph over the course of an hour and did a 40% WC ASAP.
I didnt lose a single thing.

 

[Scampy]

When I first started, I had the diatom bloom happening and went to siphon it out. I unplugged the powerhead so I didn't blow stuff around and started sucking out water. It's only a 10 gallon and I took out about ½ the water and I heard a rather loud snap. After inspecting the tank, I found no damage anywhere then I saw the orange light on the heater was on and heard a humming/sizzling kind of noise. First instinct was to pull the heater off the suction cup bracket and get it out of the tank. It had filled with water and was still plugged in. After the tingling and cold sweats stopped....I was fine. Lesson learned.

I'll tell you this one also but don't tell the wife I told you!!
My wife and her sister went out one day to get their hair done and do some shopping. After a few hours she returned and sat down on the end of the couch right next to the tank. I had a koralia 1 powerhead in there and didn't like where it was aimed so decided to adjust it. I didn't want to get my hands wet so I took a long wooden spoon I used to move things around and beat the hermits of the snails with and tried to move the powerhead with it. The spoon slipped while pushing and I slopped a bunch of tank water on the side of her head. She was p*ssed off like you wouldn't believe. After a wicked choice of colorful metaphors and a couple days in the "dog house", she forgave me. Not to mention I ended up buying the shoes that went with her new outfit.

 

[Peppie]

When I first started, I had the diatom bloom happening and went to siphon it out. I unplugged the powerhead so I didn't blow stuff around and started sucking out water. It's only a 10 gallon and I took out about ½ the water and I heard a rather loud snap. After inspecting the tank, I found no damage anywhere then I saw the orange light on the heater was on and heard a humming/sizzling kind of noise. First instinct was to pull the heater off the suction cup bracket and get it out of the tank. It had filled with water and was still plugged in. After the tingling and cold sweats stopped....I was fine. Lesson learned.

I'll tell you this one also but don't tell the wife I told you!!
My wife and her sister went out one day to get their hair done and do some shopping. After a few hours she returned and sat down on the end of the couch right next to the tank. I had a koralia 1 powerhead in there and didn't like where it was aimed so decided to adjust it. I didn't want to get my hands wet so I took a long wooden spoon I used to move things around and beat the hermits of the snails with and tried to move the powerhead with it. The spoon slipped while pushing and I slopped a bunch of tank water on the side of her head. She was p*ssed off like you wouldn't believe. After a wicked choice of colorful metaphors and a couple days in the "dog house", she forgave me. Not to mention I ended up buying the shoes that went with her new outfit.

I could never imagine get splashed with tank water!!!!! LOL

 

[str8juizy]

LOL... I LOVE all the stories! Most of them were probably pretty scary or crappy at the time but super funny now!!! Keep em comming!

 

[nata]

I had sb ask me for some sand to seed their new tank..so I thought it was a great idea to use my wet dry vac to suck some out..i wanted to put some fresh one down anyways..not paying attention talking on my cell while doing this I connected the hose to the blower end..when i pushed start it was like a hurricane hit my tank..water squirted out even hitting my outlet shorting my system and water hit one of my metal halide bulbs, made it break..there I was standing in the dark..no
electricity,no light bulb and my tank a total
disaster....not my finest momemt..

 

[broskie]

Not once not twice not three times but the fourth time I accidentally left my RO unit on in my top floor apartment and flooded the lower neighbors house. Now I'm not blaming the drinks that took place prior but the lack of the microwave alarm being set and me going to sleep. Thankfully it was such a slow drip I only flooded them with 30-50 gallons and the complex blamed the washing machine since the RO unit was plumbed ofF the washer.

 

[Faciosity]

A while back I had planned on holding our local club meeting at my house. Two days before the meeting, my girlfriend calls me at work SUPER MAD!! A light fell in my sump, and no circuits or fuses blew, so it was zapping and sparking for almost a minute. My girlfriend yanked the cord out and got a good shock while doing it. All the corals were instantly pissed and sliming everywhere. All the SPS corals were completely bleached within hours, and my tank was a sad sight when the people showed up for the meeting. I lost a small light and a few small frags, but in the long run almost everything recovered, and the meeting spectators were very understanding (I was really anxious to show off my success, not my failure!).

 

[BigAl07]

I am thoroughly enjoying these stories. I'm still LOL "re: wooden spoon leading to new shoe purchase"

I moved my tank to it's current location which has brand new Hardwood Floors. The owner of the house does Hardwood Floors as his business so of course these floors are simply amazing. I went to great lengths to set this tank up so that those small drips here and there can't get to the hardwood. The tank (34g Red Sea Max) is on an industrial carpet made for business's etc. It's exactly the right size to be 6" larger than the tank all the way around. For months everything was great and one night I was tinkering with the tank (cleaning glass, fragging, redoing wires etc) and re-did how my ATO line runs into the tank. Initially it just simply dumped into the Display Tank but every time it kicked on I could see the fresh water going into the tank. This isn't bad but I wanted it to be more invisible. So I rerouted the ATO line down into the back chambers of the tank (it's an All-In-One) and this way it's completely invisible and actually works better (quicker response on filling the tank due to close proximity to the same chamber where sensors are located). The only problem is that the ATO line is now BELOW the water's surface.

Julie and I are sitting on the couch (across from the tank) watching TV and I was admiring just how clean (and SLICK/SHINY) the floors look. They look almost like they're wet... OMG they ARE WET! Due to my ATO line being submerged the tank was draining into the ATO reservoir and I now had approximately 4g of fresh/salt water flowing across the living room floor. It took a lot of towels, moving furniture and back breaking work but the floors are none the worse and now my ATO line is firmly attached to a bracket ABOVE the water level.

This is just one of many "mishaps" but this is the most recent one.

 

[user 26995]

I was moving my 55 gal tank out and moving my 75 gal tank into its place. Got all the livestock out of the 55 into containers awaiting their new home. The move went great. I was filling the 75 with water. I was using a pump to pump the water from buckets into the tank. It went fine until the tank was over half full and the hose was below the water surface. I had the pump running and the last bucket was almost empty and the pump sucking air, so I unplugged the pump and walked away...........I heard what sounded like trickling water and wondered what it was. I walked into the room and just as the water was cresting the top of the bucket I saw it. I ran over and plugged the pump back in but not fast enough to keep about a gallon of water from flowing onto the floor. I got REAL lucky. I could have had about 30 gals back syphon out of the tank.

 

[TJL]

Great stories All, as an Old Salt I've had more than my fair share of disasters & near-disasters in most of the common area mistakes like forgetting to unplug heaters while doing WC's, unknowingly holding the hose outside the bucket while vacuuming the sandbed, getting bitten by my dropping light fixtures and timers etc. into the sump, way back when I had a SW predator tank being bitten by my Dragon Moray (hand in tank w/ mollie between fingers, eyes on friend explaining how cool this was going to be and OUCH!) and on and on....

So my best or most pertinent story... the main reason for me doing all this remodel work on our Bonus/my Fish Room is that on my previous tank (undrilled) part of my monthly maintenance was cleaning the J-tubes on the overflow box. While doing this chore I'd simply close the ball-valve a bit on the return line and clean one tube at a time, like broskie a little slow to learn lol and getting distracted mid-chore would walk away and forget about task at hand. Most of the time just a quart or two before I realized my mistake but on the last/worst occasion I had started tinkering with my fishing tackle oout in the garage and by the time I went back into the house (just to go pee) walked into the bathroom behind the wall aquarium sits and the floor was covered in 1/4" of saltwater OOOPS! about 9 gallons of OOOPS. Anyways the relatively new Burber Carpet was a goner, so back to the remodel with an all porcelain tile floor.


Cheers, Todd

 

[Krish]

I use to take my liverock out of the tank and run fresh tap water over it as I scrubbed off the algae then tossed it back in the tank after all the rocks were finished and would repeat this every week and couldn't understand why my tank still sucked as was full of algae.

Oh, and I use to use tap water that had more nitrates than my test kit could read.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[user 26995]

You reminded me of one other I did a while back. I was cleaning the return pump....seems like its alway while cleaning people forget something...and I forgot to flip the switch to turn the pump back on. Went to do something in the tank the next day, luckily it was only one day, and dang it was cold! Temp only got down to 68 but still way too cold. Heater started working overtime when I turned the pump back on. No losses.

 

[chickenofthesea]

Ok, so I haven't been in the hobby that long (about a year) so I don't have too many oops' yet. However, my first one came when I added 60 pounds of rock to my tank. I had the tank running for about 4 months and had only about 10lbs of rock in a 42g column. I acquired an entire system from someone getting out of the hobby for a "can't say no to this price" offer and they had about 125 lbs of live rock. I decided that since I had all of this rock I would keep some for myself and sell the rest. I took about 50lbs and designed a rock structure for my column and killed all the rock so as not to add any unwanted critters. I glued it all together and waited about a week. I added the entire structure to my already cycled tank not realizing, until I read a new thread, that this would more than likely start the cycling again and kill off all my live stock. Luckily, this didn't happen and everything survived and is doing great 7 months down the road.

The second one was actually the wife. I am in the military and had to leave for the field for 30 days. I employed my 8 year old son to feed, scrub and turn the light on and off on the tank while I was gone and to keep an eye on my fish and corals. While doing so he dropped the fluorescent fixture on top into the water. Realizing that this could shock him (cause he's smart for an 8 year old) didn't want to grab the light out of the water so he yelled for my wife. My wife, in a panic, rushes in and reaches into the tank to retrieve the still plugged in fixture and shocks the hell out of herself but saves the fixture. She already hates my fish tank and this didn't help matters but my son thought it was hilarious and I got a chuckle from it once I realized my fish were ok.... and the wife too. lol.

 

[rainydave]

I installed a CPR Aquafuge on my BC29. The tank was in my home office and the outlet on the fuge was a tad loud. I had the brilliant idea of putting a piece of foam over the outlet to quiet it down. This worked great for a few days. A few days later I was coming home from a late meeting and noticed the lights in my office were on. I came into the house and found my wife and son in my office. Turns out the foam had gummed up and blocked the outlet which caused the fuge to overflow. This was discovered when my son went into his room (his room is downstairs under my office) and found water dripping from his ceiling light. A total of about 4 or 5 gallons had flowed out before my wife shut everything down.
Needless to say, the foam piece was tossed in the garbage.

 

[cadillactattoo]

so when i thaught it would be a good idea to get in to this hobby i got a 29 tall acrillic tank and stand for my station at the tattoo studio , mind you the only salt water experience i had previously was , toping off a 125 and cleaming muck out of the sump . \
so i got this 29 up and running , after many failed attempts to keep any thing but a damsel and a cardnal alive . i figgured its time for upgrade to a larger tank , that will fix the problem right ??? not finding any thing i truely wanted to spend my money on i said skrew it ill just clean up this little 29 and deal with it for a while . so i pulled out the tank , and cleaned 6 mos or so of dribbles and splashes off the viewing surfaces with what i had on hand like always . well here is the fun part . what i always have on hand is 70% isopropyl rubbing alcohol ! so after i got every thing cleaned i decided to put my plastic reef background on the back of the tank , thinking a wet surface would help hold this in place i drenched the back of the tank and slapped said plastic sheeting up , slid the tank back in place and every thing looked great ........for a moment ...


in the middle of working on a good client i noticed what looked like the the background was shrinking or bubbling , probally a chemical reaction on the cheep plastic t i was thinking
so 30 min goes by and it is getting worse . looks like its actually cracking , crap right , i place my hand behind the tank and the whole tank is bowing out about an inch ! wholey crap thats the tank cracking not the background ! so said client offers a 75 glass tank thats sitting at his house for me to trade work for , . sends hid buddy to the house yto get the tank . while we are both sittin there watching these cracks grow larger by the moment ! tank arives i gingerly transfer every thing over and save every thing in the tank .

no one told me not to use alcohol to clean with , my bad . not only can it seep trhough the tank , but causes this fun thing called crazing ! i had to move that tank out of my storage , last week and when i grabbed it to move it it shattered like tempered glass ! 30 gals almost ended on the floor while i had clients from a stupid mistake . never again though .