Biggest Mistake/Regret In The Hobby

[Salty1962]

"One" of my many mistakes was dosing vodka in a 46G Bow and forgot to turn the circulation pumps back on and a bacterial bloom killed all of my fish due to lack of oxygen. Lost some nice fish;Sorry
Morale of the story, watch out when carbon dosing!;)

 

[WWIII]

Starting a tank with all dry rock and then using rock from an established stores sump to get the bacteria and biofilter going. The rock looked clean enough, but gave my tank many unwanted pests such as aiptasia. I should have used fresh live rock or just used bacteria in a bottle and more time to establish the proper cycle.

 

[ECOKid]

Whats your worst mistake or your biggest regret?

Id say being impatient. I noticed I was when i ran through 3 tanks in 1 year, never truly seeing happy corals. Impatience also caused me to start with 100% live rock. 100% pests[emoji16]

Next thing you know, im waking up to mucus nets every morning covering all corals from the mass amount of vermatid snails that manifested behind all the LR. it was so bad i was forced to restart. Which didnt happen until 5 years after. But when i started my current 56g DT, and A 90g frag tank, I took my time.

BUT, I didnt make coral dipping a habit, and i just had an epic battle with brown flatworms that im starting to overcome. So this just turned into a 3 regret reply lol

 

[ECOKid]

Oh and Apex is badasssssss

 

[saltyphish]

I am 99% sure there is no ich in my tank because I only buy fish from places that treat their fish with copper at the store.

Sorry, my biggest mistake was trusting a lfs with a good reputation and treatment plan. Lesson learned. Even the LFS with the best reputation run into problems. Believe me it happens. Trust no one but your own QT. Sometimes the fish are not in the store long enough to complete a full treatment plan. They may not show signs of infection for days or weeks once you get them home.

 

[savetheocean]

Sorry, my biggest mistake was trusting a lfs with a good reputation and treatment plan. Lesson learned. Even the LFS with the best reputation run into problems. Believe me it happens. Trust no one but your own QT. Sometimes the fish are not in the store long enough to complete a full treatment plan. They may not show signs of infection for days or weeks once you get them home.

I am going to start QT, but these fish I have no choice but to trust the lfs

 

[marc hopkins]

When changing tanks I put all the fish in a 30 gallon Brute with tank water with a pump to circulate the water thinking they would be ok. It took me about 3 hours to empty the old tank move it to one side and put the new tank in place and fill it (I was changing a Red Sea max 500 for a 650 so a lot of water and some heavy lifting).

In the meantime I hadn't been checking the fish. When I went to put them in the new tank they were all dead. The LFS thinks I must have had an electric leak on the pump as there was no other obvious reason for them to die in such a short time?

 

[Mr.Rocc]

I wouldn't call it a mistake or a regret but, not not inventing my time travel machine to go into the future where I buy a house so I can get a bigger tank!

 

[Slippin]

My biggest mistake was not checking my incoming corals throughly enough. I am currently dealing with Vermetid snails, what a pain! (Every coral that has entered my tank has been dipped in Coral RX. I also started out with dry rock)

 

[jayala12]

Wow, if that is your biggest mistake you are very lucky!

Biggest regret is the mp10... mistake was using very filthy dry Rock and not washing or curing it .. straight into the tank. Gunk and all lol ... hair algae all over the whole life of that tank ! Horrible

 

[beardown]

By far my biggest regret was putting Xenia in my first tank. What a mess. With that said, my biggest equipment mistake was using an mp 10 on a 93g cube. The magnet isn't strong enough, and it fell off. I had it zip tied, but they came right off the tank, and the dry side fell into my sump, which was on the side of my tank.

 

[savetheocean]

By far my biggest regret was putting Xenia in my first tank. What a mess. With that said, my biggest equipment mistake was using an mp 10 on a 93g cube. The magnet isn't strong enough, and it fell off. I had it zip tied, but they came right off the tank, and the dry side fell into my sump, which was on the side of my tank.

I think you can put it on its own rock, like an island

 

[beardown]

I think you can put it on its own rock, like an island

Lol yeah, I'm sure, but not taking that chance again. Beautiful coral, but seriously not worth it. It's more a weed than a coral.

 

[savetheocean]

Lol yeah, I'm sure, but not taking that chance again. Beautiful coral, but seriously not worth it. It's more a weed than a coral.

I get it haha

 

[Sealion]

Regret not getting a bigger tank than 29cube
Bigger tank the water parameter is more stable

We started with a 29 gallon Biocube. Now have 2 29 biocubes/2 14 gallon biocubes/ 93 gallon marineland cube (those are the saltwater ones) and 27 cube freshwater tank

 

[JP79]

Going cheap. Going cheap as not getting higher end equipment. I get that most people that start the hobby quit it. So you don't want to spend the money. But spending it up front would have saved me money. Then again I don't care about the money. Its about the headache.

 

[rtparty]

Trusting a LFS. Any of them. They are there to make money and don't truly care about you or your tank. Copper doesn't kill ich unless used properly and no store is running it properly because certain fish, that the stores carry all the time, can't tolerate copper. Therefore, ich is present in their systems.

I'm sorry, but trusting the LFS that sold a new hobbyist a powder brown tang is ludicrous. They are not easy fish and I don't see this experience ending well.

 

[Dizzirn]

I am 99% sure there is no ich in my tank because I only buy fish from places that treat their fish with copper at the store.

Read the qt forums

 

[lightningreef2690]

The 3 big mistakes/regrets that I have include.

1. Started a 20 gallon as my first reef tank. As a beginner i should have listened and went with the largest tank i could, but at the time I wasnt sute that i wanted to commit the thousands of dollars to a large system, so i went with what seemed reasonably priced at the time. If i could do it again i would have started with the larger reef and moved onto a nano once i mastered balancing water parameters.

2. Starting my 75 gallon reef with HOB equipment instead of a sump, or simply my lack of patience. With they cycle of a new reef tank taking up a month of time, I was in a rush to get the system going, fish swimming and coral growing, so i rushed and used what eauipment i had on hand and set up the reef with a HOB filter and a canister filter. After about 2 months of weekly maintainence of those 2 filters I gave in and bought a used sump. In my short 2 years of reefkeeping this was the best decision I made. I can honestly say I will not setup a reef tank again without a sump.

3. Purchasing a LED fixture as my first reef light. This isn't something many people agree with, but, my first reef light was an AI Prime HD, which I still have over top of my innovative marine 20 gallon AIO. I struggled for over 6 months as a newbie trying to get the light spectrum where i thought i needed it to grow coral. It was frustrating because even when i coppied the settings from other users online I still struggled with growing corals. If i could go back and do it again I would have started with an T5 unit because of how simple and effective they are.

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

Leaving my tank in the hands of a house sitter while on a cruise. Something went wrong, and there was an electrical short somewhere. She didn't know what to do, so she just unplugged everything, unable to contact us. I came home to a green tank, all my livestock was dead. :-(