What is the dumbest, most destructive mistake you have ever made on one of your tanks

[basile]

I saw this post in another site and its a fun one . I thought we could use a laugh.


I thought this might make a fun post...for those of you who are brave enough! lol


What is the dumbest, most destructive mistake you have ever made on one of your aquariums?

 

[basile]

Me i bought $ 195 worth of macro algaes to start my mini refugium in september 2013, then i bought 4 trochus snails to eat micro algaes... little did i know that they also eat macros, they basically shaved my rocks in less than a week $ 195 worth of macro's down the drain, and then the four of then died on me .

 

[Waters]

I haven't done anything wrong yet with my current tank but my first tank, when I was much younger and much less knowledgable, housed a picasso trigger, lionfish, and a large moray in a 29 gallon tank. I also used tap water, didn't have a sump, and did basically everything wrong. Can't get any dumber than that :-( For some reason I could never get rid of my algae issues lol. I must of went to 4 different LFS asking for assistance with the algae and not one of them ever said anything about my stocking levels. I am so glad we have access to the information available on the internet.

 

[Qube]

I was dosing kalk through my ATO and needless to say, the float valve stuck... Dumped 5gal of kalk saturated water into my system while I was at work. Several large water changes later and over 2 months later, those SPS that made it were looking rougher than they should be.

Realizing there must be something else afoot, I thought about other changes I made and I came up with my secondary culprit. Right before the kalk dump, I switched over to 3 Kessil A360w's. With those lights, I mounted them with their 90 degree adapter on their gooseneck mount, which significantly raises the light off the tank. Got my hands on a PAR meter, and there you go. At full burn, I was only hitting 200 PAR just below the water surface and virtually nothing at the sand bed, even though the tank appeared much brighter to the eye.

Net result, the 90 degree mounts went into a storage bin and the lights are now sitting about 5" off the surface and things are bouncing back amazingly quick! Hah! Hope this qualifies... Looking back, I can only say for certain that I am an idiot! Hah!

 

[Ladysaber]

My mom dumped a 5 gallon jug of Kalk water into my 30 gallon tank while I was in the garage filling up my buckets with salt water. I lost every fish and invert within 5 mins of her doing it (2 clowns, a quarter sized hippo tang that was being homed in the smaller tank until he got big enough for the 150, 2 cleaner shrimp, an entire CUC, and a RBTA). The corals all survived because I acted quickly and pulled them all out threw them into my 150.

My poor mom was beating herself up over it, but she bought me all new fish to make up for it..

I tease her about it now, but at the time I was heartbroken over all that loss. She is no longer allowed to help with any water changes.

Jenn

 

[Qube]

My mom dumped a 5 gallon jug of Kalk water into my 30 gallon tank while I was in the garage filling up my buckets with salt water. I lost every fish and invert within 5 mins of her doing it (2 clowns, a quarter sized hippo tang that was being homed in the smaller tank until he got big enough for the 150, 2 cleaner shrimp, an entire CUC, and a RBTA). The corals all survived because I acted quickly and pulled them all out threw them into my 150.

My poor mom was beating herself up over it, but she bought me all new fish to make up for it..

I tease her about it now, but at the time I was heartbroken over all that loss. She is no longer allowed to help with any water changes.

Jenn

Ouch...

 

[TrialandError]

Bought a couple fish didn't QT and lost over $500 in 4 fish. Then there was the time I didn't have a timer for my lights and I went a spell without turning them on and 99% of my zoas died. Was an expensive irrisponsible regret. Lights get turned on every day now.

 

[TarHeelReefer22]

Put a used glass thermometer in my sump of my 160 which malfunctioned and came home to my tank reading just over 106 degrees F...Lost my flashing tile goby, blue dot jawfish, all my anthias and about 1500 dollars worth of sps

 

[cdness]

I moved a tank and thought it was better to leave the corals in buckets overnight than put them in cloudy water... 95% loss, including a fuzzy pink millipora that I have never been able to find again...

 

[RedReefer]

Started dosing alk by itself to adjust my parameters. I ended up getting my water so out of balance that I almost completely crashed the tank. I lost several colonies of high end coral.

 

[basile]

Pumping action




Not really destructive but last night after feeding having turned everything back on via my apex on the computer , this morning realised that i left the return pump OFF all night. Always double check i guess, because that was stupid, at least they had water movement.


My bad

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