your worst mess up on a reef tank

[yardrat]

let's see.. i went to Las Vegas for a week and let someone who knows tanks take care of it and when i came home everything was dead.. i mean everything .. only thing that was left was little fish skeletons everywhere.. i will never do that again.. cost me about $2,ooo.. plus having to start all over fresh.. now i only leave for a few days at a time of have my friend from the lfs to come over and watch it.. i pay them for it and they are responsible if anyhting dies and they replace it too.. <img src="graemlins//yell.gif" border="0" alt="[yell]" />

 

[underthesea]

I went to Cazamel mexico for a week and had my father watch my tanks (I showed him how to take care of the tanks before i left) btu when I got home my fowlr tank was all dead all fish and even the rock was no good really the ammonia was through the roof. He over feed a couple times to make up for when he was not going to make it to the house.,

 

[kelly]

At the beginning or January this year I setup a new tank, and purchased 2 inexpensive test kits, one for ammonia, and the other for nitrates. I just checked them, and one expired in 1997 and the other in 1998. I was wondering why the tank had not started it's cycle.

 

[lordofthereef]

i think my mess up was buying all that fiji rock. all i want to do anymore is trade it in for some nice tonga rock! well, that isn't gonna happen anytime soon! <img src="graemlins//confused2.gif" border="0" alt="[confused2]" />

 

[fossilcrab]

Ive been cleaning my tank and I place the beer (mug full) that I'm drinking on the top of the hood and started scrapping. Low and behold, I hit the mug with my elbow and the mug plunges right down into my tank. The fishes and the softies reacted. I moved as fast as I can and turn on the carbon filter to get rid of the impurities. I think my fishes went tipsy for a while and began kissing each other, my skimmer went havoc ... taking about "bubblies". Anyway, lesson learned, don't drink and clean. LOL
P.S. That's when my girlfriend smack me with my algae scrapper on my ass and I have evidence to prove it. <img src="graemlins//urrr.gif" border="0" alt="[urrr]" />
P.S.S. No livestock got killed on my mistake.
Ray.

 

[zack schwartz]

Thanks now I know I am not alone when I make stupied mistakes! LOL

 

[flydan]

Hey,
I really like my emerald crabs and one day I saw two very large ones on sale at the lfs so I bought them. HUGE mistake. One tore into my elegance coral and the other ripped the $#@%! out of some mushrooms. Then I had to get them out of a 55gal tank with 120lbs of lr. What a nightmare. Moral of the story: Bigger isn't better! Small emerald crabs are great, but the really big ones are not reef safe.
Dan'l

 

[sharkbait]

Okay I had two horriable screw-ups. The first was when I got my first reef tank set up and my fish catch ICK. I treated the tank with copper treatment saved the $40 worth of fish kill $160 worth of inverts. <img src="graemlins//yell.gif" border="0" alt="[yell]" /> Second screw-up I was cleaning my tank and dropped my PC light into the water. Blew the lights, zapped my fish, set off my house breakers, and stepped on my cat.

 

[zack schwartz]

What happen to those poor fish

 

[bambalamb]

My worst mistake was using de-chlorinated tap water in my first attempt at a reef tank. Poor water conditions make for a long, slow, painful end to some innocent corals. Thanks to this board I will learn from my mistakes (and from others' mistakes) and have a healthy happy reef tank!

 

[califishdude]

my worse mistake was i had a 100gallon reef tank set-up at my moms house when i left over seas. when i came home 9 mos later the tank was dead. she decided to turn on the woodstove next to the tank and heated to whole tank to 100 and someting. she thought the fish would be cold. i had a friend do the water changes and testing for me. then i aksed where the huge 10lb piece of LR was and she said she was using it as a door stopper cuz it looked cool. boy i was mad

 

[shep]

Ok lets see here. I think the first great one was I was told to cycle my tank with damsels... damn they are hard to get out of reef tanks. Second was when A/C broke in august in South Carolina. Bags of ice worked great but leaked and upset salinty bad. After that was ich and told the wofe what to get and that must have been to far of a drive due to she went to a closer place and got a nice coral killing ich med. Next was my mandrin escapade. I was told it would eat flakes....sure when pigs fly and my wolf hybrids love all animals. I would advise ducking the hybrids will be jumping at the pigs. I now have a 500 dollar mandrin due to my stupidity and research everyhing. Oh yea one more for ya...the snake nose ell vs. the rodeo cleaner shimp. cleaner had lived with him for over a year. Walked over latched on ell took off and well the clean came off about 2 ft later as the ell ducked under a rock. Needless to say he didn't ride the full 8 seconds. Almost forgot....gorund the tank with one of those nifty probes...trust me. They are well worth the 4 bucks if you reach in with shorted powerhead. Bad part was it was fish sitting.

 

[hairtrigger]

Hmmmm, I slowly let my first reef die, but learned after that. I started doing marine tanks with aggressives, and that was probably where my worst mess up occured. I listened to the LFS each time I went to buy fish for my old 110. Well, this LFS told customers whatever they wanted to hear to make a sale. After my 110 was cycled, I ended up having, because of the salesman:
3 clown triggers
2 volitan lionfish
1 louti grouper
1 lunare wrasse
1 huma huma trigger
2 porcupine puffers
1 dogface puffer
1 undulated trigger
Well, after not being able to keep anything alive, I wised up. Not to mention my nitrates and ammonia were through the roof. And no fish got along, if they lived long enough. Stupid LFS. Now, I have learned to do my own research. Thousands down the drain. Ugh.

 

[sammystingray]

I tried to get away with normal output strip lights when I started...... 160 watts of slow death to corals. I would guess it cost me about 800 dollars in corals. Tried a feather star before I knew they basically can't be fed....tried flame scallops before I knew they basically can't be fed enough. Let my reef overheat and crash twice which I would guess at 3000 dollars in damage from lost life. Bought tons of bluelegs which slowly tortured and killed my astreas.....took a year to get them all out, and I still wonder if I did. I could go on.......I started with a single very outdated book, and no computer........didn't have a clue.

 

[hairtrigger]

Ouch Sammy. Maybe you got your "newbie" advice from that guy who used to post on the board about using house lights for everything including SPS corals.

 

[saltynewbie]

i put a brass one-way valve on my return line from my sump... it didnt dawn on my that brass is a copper alloy... needless to say, i didnt have many inverts left after that fiasco... actually had 1 astrea and about 5 hermits make it out. just remember... NO BRASS!!!

 

[kreach]

This all happened with my first reef tank. I cringe whenever I think about this stuff...
Used a Fluval filter... bad bad mistake on two occasions.
1. I didn't have an end cap on the intake tube... my large mandarin goby got sucked butt first into the tube. Poor little guy had the front half of his body hanging out the bottom of the tube. Needless to say, he didn't make it.
2. The output tube of the Fluval was situated just under the waterline at the back of the aquarium so that the output would ripple the top of the water. The water level got low while I was gone and the output shot water over the edge of the tank... emptied about 50% of the water in the aquarium before someone came home and noticed it.
I also bought a cheap submersible heater... which proceeded to go haywire and heat my tank up to over 90 degrees. I lost all my fish and half my corals due to that... about $500 worth of stuff.
And finally, I didn't sufficiently "eel proof" my tank before putting an eel in. Found the eel dead and stiff on the carpet in front of the tank about a week later.

 

[discusking]

ummm...lets just say, i added an athias, it died, nothing survive = coral, dead, fish = dead whole tank = dead!!!!

 

[gollum]

nothing too big...

 

[mvogel2]

i used to only have an underground filter with 2power heads in my ole 55 gal. Anyway i never took the power head off to clean them. One morning i awoke to find my entire tank (with the exception of 1 damsel) dead. Including my 2 month old horned shark i had just shelled out 85 bucks for.
Substrate had been sucked into the power head and clogged it. I can only assume they all suffocated.
Won't happen again
matt