The Greatest Newbie Mistakes of All Time

[merredeth]

Originally Posted by Tang3
Well Mine was not informing maids to clean my tank (I assumed that they would know) I was wrong and found out the hard way. Now evey monday I put up a sign on my tank just in case.
Are you saying you let the maid clean your tanks?
Heck, I won't let my cleaning lady go near my tanks with Windex, Old English or anything! I just don't want the problems.
Denise M.

 

[merredeth]

I bet I'll get any award for biggest mistake from all of you.
When I inherited the first tank the person who gave it to me told me she washed all her live rock with tap water to get rid of the crap on it.
I listened to her and believed her for the first week. Then I got to thinking... "wait a minute, there is no tap water and toothbrushes in the ocean. I'm gonna buy a book...."
I was addicted to ACCURATE information from then on.
I'll accept my award for stupidity now....
Denise M.

 

[aelene]

Did somewhat of an impulse buy and converted from FW tank... bought my original setup at Petland after the LFS guy told me, "Saltwater tanks are just as easy as freshwater!! Take that CC and water and you can have fish in your tank within 48 hours!"
Three months later after NEVER having my levels right I finally drained the tank, got LS and LR (had finally found swf.com thank god).
I now give the Petland mgr an evil eye every time I'm in there (for water and catfood only). He's even approached and confronted me on why I buy my stuff from Dallas North instead of him.. and hasn't been too friendly about it lol. I've mentioned to him that his information was inaccurate and he insists that it wasn't. Punk!
P.S Anyone want to buy a bunch of CC?

 

[sinner's girl]

I've used cc is all my tanks. It just means you have to clean it, which is a pain. And with lots of lr it's more of a pain, which I will shortly fine out when I do a wc. but it's not like the cc will kill your fish. ls is just better. next tank I'll use ls, just so i don't have to clean the cc.

 

[crazyzeus1]

Originally Posted by Aelene
Did somewhat of an impulse buy and converted from FW tank... bought my original setup at Petland after the LFS guy told me, "Saltwater tanks are just as easy as freshwater!! Take that CC and water and you can have fish in your tank within 48 hours!"
Three months later after NEVER having my levels right I finally drained the tank, got LS and LR (had finally found swf.com thank god).
I now give the Petland mgr an evil eye every time I'm in there (for water and catfood only). He's even approached and confronted me on why I buy my stuff from Dallas North instead of him.. and hasn't been too friendly about it lol. I've mentioned to him that his information was inaccurate and he insists that it wasn't. Punk!
P.S Anyone want to buy a bunch of CC?

We use Dallas North for our sevice & where we get our stuff...I agree about Petland!!! The Mgr. tells me to rip off the Dallas North stickers from our refill jugs (only half joking) becuase "they will rip you off". Ugh...their things are priced higher for a reason!

 

[aelene]

Originally Posted by Sinner's Girl
I've used cc is all my tanks. It just means you have to clean it, which is a pain. And with lots of lr it's more of a pain, which I will shortly fine out when I do a wc. but it's not like the cc will kill your fish. ls is just better. next tank I'll use ls, just so i don't have to clean the cc.
His advice on using CC is no big deal.. it was the "same work as freshwater, you can have fish in 48 hours" thing that really irked me. Just bad advice imo. I should have read before buying

probably would have made better decisions in the things I purchased in the beginning.

 

[bwilson]

Ours was just last night dont kill us as it still hurts a bit. My wife went to the LFS again!! Picked up two more bubble tips and placed them in the tank. They kept moving so my wife stayed up with them until 1:30 when she got in bed I asked had they attached she said nope so we went to sleep. This morning we awoke to find one of them has attached to a place that he wont get any light and the other

was found wrapped arround the grates of the overflow

.
BW
(Tested the water cleaned out the sock and everything is ok)

 

[mikeyjer]

Well, the biggest mistake we've made was not QT the fish when we first got them. Then next thing would be copper treatment with tangs. NEVER do that again!!!!

But thank god for this site, it have helped us to learn quite a bit. We've been on other sites, but it's not as good as this site. Also thank a friend of mine who had saltwater fish for years. He helped us quite a bit too. We lost about 12 fish do to stupidity. Now we learn after 12 fish later. Poor fellas...

But look on the bright side, we have healthy happy fish now... :happyfish

 

[fadec40]

Originally Posted by Merredeth
Are you saying you let the maid clean your tanks?
Heck, I won't let my cleaning lady go near my tanks with Windex, Old English or anything! I just don't want the problems.
Denise M.

MAIDS and CLEANING LADIES????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Heck, why not just hire Aquarium Service to maintain the tank?
Better yet, have the chauffer keep the tank glass clean when he's not waxing the Rolls Royce!

 

[jmick]

The biggest mistake I made was back in college (had a nice community FO) and told my brother that he could buy a fish for it if he wanted. Well, he bought a Clown Trigger that killed all of my fish.
Mistake number two: used CC and an under gravel filter.
Mistake number three: Didn’t quarantine a new Tang which had Ick that ended up wiping out my tank. Added copper to treat which killed all my crustaceans and I had to toss all my live rock and sand.
Mistake Number four: Added a Sebae Anemone to tank with only NO lighting.
Mistake number five: Bought a Seaclone skimmer (used for 1 month and tried to return and ended up tossing in garbage where it belongs).
Mistake number six: This is the big one, listened to my LFS advice on 2 thru 6.
Now a few good things I’ve done:
1)Bought a copy of the Conscientious Marine Aquarist by Fenner.
2)Bought a quarantine tank
3)Bought a Aqua-C Skimmer
4)Made a refugium
5)Added a DSB

 

[rpick]

i though one of my emeralds was done molting. i jumped the gun and took it out too soon.

 

[cherizle]

Here's my list
#1 buying fish from ***** (why do they keep dying again.....)
#2 putting a threadfin butterfly in a 29 gal!!!!!!!!
#3 when testing my water for salinity i wasn't making sure all of the bubbles escaped the hydrometer so it was testing WAY higher than it actually was
#4 i bought a book when i first started out that said in order to cycle your tank you have to slowly start putting fish in there, i cycyled my tank with a dwarf angle

poor little guy lived quit a while considering.....
#5 not knowing my purple pseudocromis would eat cleaner shrimp- they were gone about 10 minutes after putting them in
i have a 55g reef now & looking to upgrade & i can't believe i did any of these things so embarrassing!

 

[ophiura]

10g tank with light strip
white aquarium gravel
undergravel filter
First week:
2 damsels
2 bar gobies
condylactus anemone
arrow crab
brittlestar
No acclimation.
Lessons learned? Priceless.

 

[jdragunas]

Mine takes the cake!
I was jogging along the beach in Hawaii (on my honeymoon). It was beautiful!!! I was so busy watching the scenery, i didn't see the dip in the road. I fell of the cliff (all roads in hawaii are on cliffs, what is that all about???), hit a few trees, rocks, and bushes on the way down, and landed on the beach. I only fell 25 feet, but I broke both legs, both bones in my right arm, shattered my foot, and broke my collar bone in two places!!!
jenn

 

[shoorty069]

1. Buying fish from *****. 2 of them had ich and killed everything in my tank, including the only clownfish ive had that actually payed attention to my anemone. Im still looking for another one that will inhabit them.
2. Crushed Coral. Its still in there, but its getting dirty, and were getting sand as soon as i sift the coral out. The LFS sold us 2 bags of live sand and 1 bag of crushed coral, so i have a taste of both worlds, now its on to sifting.
3. ...hmm. The chocolate chip starfish eats EVERYTHING! I get home from school to find out he ate a snail we got 3 days ago that was crawling on the glass. Starfish gave it the sneak attack.
4. Getting a huge hermit crab. Its now in a shell almost the size of a tennis ball. His big claw is almost a square inch.
5. Not getting a cleaner shrimp sooner.
6. Jumping the guns and rushing into this hobby without research. I liked nemo, i wanted nemo, i got nemo, nemo died a month later

THE END...i hope. ill probably do something stupid in the future, ill keep you updated...
<3ryry

 

[matty0h_52]

1. adding way to many fish at once and took my bio-load for a down hill spiral for disaster.
2. listening to anyone from a pet-express or *****
3. Starting the tank with tap watter
4. adding Damsel in the tank-

 

[murph]

Originally Posted by oreo12
Ok 20 yeras ago I bought my first coral it was a hard coral I had one 24 inch long regular kitchen light over the tank. It looked cool in the pet shop and i don't think anyone knew beter back then. My crushed coral is 11 years old my nitrates are 0 so what is the real problem with cc not properly maintaing the tank?
At the risk of sounding like Forrest Gump. Mamma always told me; keep your old suites someday they will come back in style. Theres a good chance this concept applies to this hobby also and 5 years from now you will be hearing. "Scrap the sand idea and go with CC"

Of course by then there will be a new generation of hobbyist who will think its a new idea.

 

[mikeyjer]

My only comment now is about all these previous post saying bad stuffs about *****. We LOVE our ***** here. You guys must have bad ones. We NEVER had a problem with *****'s fish, but from the LFS near by us. Now this LFS has been around for a long long time and have a huge selection on both salt & freshwater fish. The people there aren't super bad, but not super friendly or helpful either. They know their stuff, but they've gotten too big for themselves and not QT their newly arrived saltwater BUT they do QT their newly arrived freshwater fish. They did QT them in the past cause they had all those tanks on their bottom shelve where they used to keep them, but not anymore. That's where I bought sick fish that killed my whole tank in the beginning. All the fish from ***** that we bought had great success. Now we're into buying from this site cause we had great success too. Just my thoughts!!!

 

[hot883]

Originally Posted by jdragunas
Mine takes the cake!
I was jogging along the beach in Hawaii (on my honeymoon). It was beautiful!!! I was so busy watching the scenery, i didn't see the dip in the road. I fell of the cliff (all roads in hawaii are on cliffs, what is that all about???), hit a few trees, rocks, and bushes on the way down, and landed on the beach. I only fell 25 feet, but I broke both legs, both bones in my right arm, shattered my foot, and broke my collar bone in two places!!!
jenn

Jenn, I lived there 10 years. Bet ya won't do that again.

:help:

 

[monalisa]

Originally Posted by Fadec40
MAIDS and CLEANING LADIES????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Heck, why not just hire Aquarium Service to maintain the tank?
Better yet, have the chauffer keep the tank glass clean when he's not waxing the Rolls Royce!

Too funny!!! Something kinda like that rolled through my mind, but I'm just too jealou...err...polite to say it.

My newbie mistake is up and coming. I'm in the middle of a cleaning and wc right now, so I may be experiencing one as we speak.
Lisa :happyfish