Post your bonehead mistakes

rhomer

rhomer

Member
I thought this might be intersting, and I know everyone here has had a few of these.
This weekend I was starting a new 55-gallon, I had the stand assembled the tank on the stand, and was starting to make some di water.
It took four days of filtering to get the tank full, now it's time to get the sump under the tank.
The sump was small enough to fit in the cabinet, but too big to get in the cabinet (DOOOOHHHH!!).
Time to go buy a fourty gallon rubbermaid, unload all the water in the rubbermaid. Move the tank, disassemble the cabinet, put the sump in the cabinet, reassemble the cabinet, and refill the tank.
I now have a "built in sump".
<img src="graemlins//urrr.gif" border="0" alt="[urrr]" />
 
whipple

whipple

Member
Ok check this out, I started setting up my tank and couldnt find lace rock for anything,(was gonna use it as a base for the live rock) so i went down to the 50 local landscaping placeslooking for a replacement for the lace. Well the guy there tells me he has this nice feather rock that (many people buy all the time for aquariums) so i say ok cool so i spend about 2 hours going through their rock piles looking for stuff that would fit the purpose. (by the way this stuff is so so light thats why its called feather rock) anyways i buy just over 100lbs, hurry it home and put it in a giant rubber maid tub rinse it a few times and then add salt water to have everything as it will be later when it goes in the tank. Well after three hours i test the water to see if theres anything leaching out of the rocks that will contaminate the water. So my wife comes home and i rush her out back to show her what a great thing i did and to tell her about how much money we will be saving, well anyways i'm standing there telling her how smart i am for saving all this money (LOL) and she picks up a peice to look at and then another and all of a sudden starts busting up laughing and ask what are you gonna do with this stuff? Well i go back through the speach of how much money i saved us by buying this rock for the base and how much live rock we can buy for the top of it and she picks up another piece and as she contiues laughing at me i realize the rock is floating. Well it turns out that feather rock is also called pumice rock and it is worthless to use in aquariums, so then i had 100 lbs of worthless rock and even less money to go buy the base and live rock we needed to start off our tank. Oh well the landscape place to it back at a dicounted price after a long and loud discussion over the fact he told me lots of people buy it for aquariums.
Well thats my story, hope you find it funnier than i did !
 
fab71

fab71

Member
About 2 years ago when I first ventured into saltwater everything I attempted to adjust my bacpak venturi skimmer with the screws against the glass. I was finally happy until I got back home from work to find 75% of my tank water missing. I panicked, ran to the faucet and replaced the water in the tank. I ended up with an entire tank of dead inhabitants, a ruined rug and an earful from my wife (girl at the time). I gave up saltwater after that but have since started up again. Hopefully this time without any stoopid mistakes. <img src="graemlins//dead.gif" border="0" alt="[dead]" />
 
q

q

Member
The first time I tried to use my calcium test kit I glanced at the instructions and completed the test. Well since I had low calcium I began adding calcium for a few days until in my frustration I finally decided that I was doing something wrong. So I went through and read the last line in the instructions which then made perfect sence to me. Then I found that my calcium was off the scale by a fair bit. stupid stupid stupid :rolleyes:
 
broomer5

broomer5

Active Member
Okay let's see, bonehead mistakes ..... where should I begin.
Mispronoucing the word anemone while my folks and girlfriend were in the room.
I can tell you from the look on their faces, it's not pronounced enima.
Not testing my tap water on my first tank, until after it became a small marine botany class experiment, with every known form of green algae growing like weeds.
Not using hose clamps .... leaving that one to your own imagination.
Considered using a very nice long glass lab type mercury thermometer for a permanent temperature indicator in the tank ... realizing once I came of my temporary brain lock ... that maybe mercury would not be the best choice.
But the one bonehead move I regret the most is losing a Mandarin Dragonette to insufficient food supply. I had the pods, I had the live rock, I had what I thought at the time was enough to care for it. I really thought I had it all figured out, it lived for about a year. Looking back .... I think I was just naive, uninformed and used poor judgement.
That's all .... there's more, but I'll spare you for now.
 
chainsaw5vent

chainsaw5vent

Member
back in 1991 in my f/o tank, i had several fish that i was quite proud of. i went out and added an adult blue face angel. this was done without checking any of the water parameters for several months prior to the purchase. the angel was placed into the water, and "Gee, he's kinda pale.." was in my mind. go to work, come home the next day and the b/f angel is missing. "aw, he must be bashfully adjusting to the new tank and mates.." i thought. about 4 days after the purchase, i found him floating, very dead and decayed in the tank. his death started a chain reaction in the tank, i was not able to save any of the fish except one. total loss was somewhere around $400 <img src="graemlins//eek.gif" border="0" alt="[eek]" /> <img src="graemlins//eek.gif" border="0" alt="[eek]" /> now i check before i add. and the Q tank will be up and running in the next few days. <img src="graemlins//angel.gif" border="0" alt="[angel]" />
 
biggdriver

biggdriver

Member
Had a 4ft LARGE snowflake eel and a large lionfish in a 125..One night after a few too many beers..>>>>>>>>>Got done feeding and left the covers off the tank..Was gone for the weekend and when I came back Couldn't find the eel anywhere..I looked Everywhere...About a week later My little cocker spaniel was heard chewing on something crunchy. My wife went to see what the dog got into now.. and totally freaked out..The dog had been keeping the dried up eel in her dog bed in the corner of our living room..And came out running with it in her mouth.....All dried up and crunchy
That was the last time she let me have any type of eel...
 
fshhub

fshhub

Active Member
listening to those i though t had the knowledge,
the lfs!!
now, they listen to me, and if they try to sell me something, i will go elsewhere, they all know it
2d was not buying a 75 with the overflow, and putting the sump in b4 filling, like mentioned above, now i wixh i had both(maybe soon i will use a rubbermaid anyhow, i just don't trust overflow boxes though)
and last not learning more, before jumping in
but i am young, so i am sure that will not be it
and sorry whipple, i tried to keep my mouth shut, but now the cat is out, and i did not do it(that was nice looking rock too)
LOL
 
chevron tang

chevron tang

Member
Man I can't really think of any off hand at the moment. Though Whipple your not the only one with the feather rock experience. When Predator and I set up the 30G predator tank we were all about saving the money. So I went to work and bought a few lbs of base rock which of course didn't do much damage. Then Predator went to Home Depot and called me on the cell all excited because he had found these huge pieces of feather rock for really cheap (and the employee there told him we could use it for an aquarium) so that got me excited because we had saved so much money. So he gets home, we rinse off the rock, and when I stuck it in the tank it just kinda floated about midway in the water. We then tried to anchor it down with some of the base rock, that didn't not really work out well because we now had a huge piece of rock with half of it still trying to float. Really annoying, won't ever buy that again. I guess it goes to show you get what you pay for.
 
fshhub

fshhub

Active Member
man, i forgot, the feather rock, you guys shoulda left it in, that would have made for a really interesting reef, growing upside down, LOL, i know you could post the pics and no one woudl be able to top it, that is for sure, it would be the most interesting reef i have seen(inverted that is)
ROTFLOL
 
fab71

fab71

Member
I think we might be able to start a floating rock trend on this board. I'm going to buy a few tomorrow morning and start it up. It certainly sounds better than the floating fish I see at my lfs :D :) :D .
 
chevron tang

chevron tang

Member
I remember once when I first began the sw hobby I made the mistake of purchasing a choclate chip starfish. What a disaster! I put him in my tank and really didn't pay much attention to him, considering I went to bed and everything, and the next morning when I got up all seemed well so I went to work. That night when I got home from work I was of course steadily staring at my tank and noticed that my colt looked kinda funny. It was as if the base was rotting off. That seemed kinda weird to me that so much would be gone in just a few hours. I got to looking at the tank more and realized that where there used to be alot of coralline algae that there where patches here, there, and everywhere where the algae was gone. I called up at work and they told me the culprit was the starfish, so I immediately took him out of the tank. Luckily the colt made it through and to this day is still alive and pretty. By the way that was before I worked the saltwater dep. of the store, obviously. :D
 
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