Biggest Mistake/Regret In The Hobby

[Eredus]

I did not qt the last group of fish I added. Resulted in a a loss of all of my fish due to an outbreak of velvet. This has been the only time in the hobby where I experienced this significant a loss. It affected my wife and I greatly as we were very attached to our 'fish kids'. Once I realized what was happening it was too late to do anything as velvet is swift and unjust. I will Never add an unquarantined specimen to my dt ever again. Will be fallow until December. Now I get to enjoy feeding my corals, shrimps an other inverts.

 

[WW2]

My biggest mistake so far.... I got tired of carrying buckets of water from way out back to my tank, decided to build a hose system to pump from tank to tank... Used a brass spigot... Was not a problem on first water change, I did not think about it and left the spigot in the tank when mixing my next batch of water. It sat in the new batch for a week. Did the next water change and killed 6 frags, all of my snails and my urchin. Luckily the starfish lived long enough for me to get him into a different tank. The clowns and the bubble tip were not affected.

 

[Elder1945 Verified Sponsor]

Having to cut this out of my basement....

 

[Royce White]

Not knowing what I didn't know.

 

[SciGuy2]

Getting married.

 

[KirstenB]

Getting married.

Lol what?? Lol

 

[drizzle21]

Not qting fish, got away with it for 2 yrs then lost all but one fish.

 

[Cherub]

Getting married.

xD

 

[dodgerblew]

I have/had a 60 cube, 4 yr old mature sps dominate mixed reef. Some of my colonies, RP and PC Superman Table were ~8". I had many very nice high end pieces from WWC, SC, BC etc. There's the forward.

In Mar/April I noticed some stn around the edge of encrustation on my RP. Since the RP was growing next to another lg table and their encrusting edges were getting to the point of touching I just figured the recession was from one coral winning. After a couple weeks the stn was showing in places that were different than the initial contact so out of concern I tested Alk etc. my Alk was in the 4's. My reservoir had run dry and Alk had dropped. I refilled reservoir and upped my doser for amount of ml per day to quite a bit higher to start bringing it up. Additionally, I started manually dosing daily not going over one number elevation a day. It took 4 days or so to get it back and things started looking up soon. I forgot however about upping the dose per day so it continued on and on until one day I came out to the dreaded white fog in water and the death smell. I Alk cooked my reef :( when I tested my salifert syringe emptied and hadn't yet changed color. That's at least 15.8. After removal and at least 50% of water changed over three days on day 4 my Alk was still in the high 12's. I have no idea how high it actually was but it doesn't matter. It was the worst self inflicted nightmare after almost 20 yrs in the reef hobby. Even now, writing thisafter many months I threw up in my mouth a little

 

[c2l2parker]

I just dont get the apex and controllers, I never saw the point to it. Why cant you just walk up to the tank and push the button or just un plug it? Whats different?

I travel a lot, so the Apex has been a tank/life saver. With it I can monitor temp, ph, and other parameters from anywhere. I can also turn equipment on/ off from anywhere. I combine mine with 2 small cameras, one on my sump and one on my tank, which helps provide even more info.

Even if you don't travel, a controller like an apex is great for redundancy. If my heaters or my auto top off systems malfunction (over the years both have failed), the programming with an apex allows you to have backup. For example, if my heater is stuck "on", it doesn't matter. My apex shuts off power to the heater and lights when the temp reaches a certain point. Likewise, the power to my auto top off shuts down except during the two minute intervals that I have programmed it to be on. That way if my float valve gets stuck, it doesn't create a big problem.

 

[savetheocean]

I hope new reefers will learn from these. I have learned a lot

 

[Engineergoby]

Whats your worst mistake or your biggest regret?

Putting any type of clown fish in my tanks

 

[savetheocean]

Putting any type of clown fish in my tanks

Really? Why

 

[savetheocean]

Having to cut this out of my basement....

Oh wow

 

[Zoakeeper]

Awesome Lounge topic. I could write an essay. But here I am some thirty years later...

 

[Orm Embar]

Adding a royal gramma to a biocube

I thought royal grammas were generally peaceful as long as you didn't invade their "cave"; how is this a mistake?

 

[Jrco226]

Buying a AIO tank

 

[RussiReef]

Not installing chloramine filter from the start

 

[azreeftank]

Adding a beautiful small Maroon clown fish. Oh he's so cute! Wow he host all my anemones over night........He's so cute...... NOT
I despise the dang fish. I have been trying to catch that stinking terror and he's just messing with me. I have no idea how to get him out of a 250 reef without destroying my corals. Ugh I regret the day I saw him he was fine for 5 years and like 2 months ago decided to start WW3 with other fish. I am to the point I'm even thinking of using a pitch fork to catch him. Traps don't work. Fishing wire and hook he steals the food and won't hook on!! I would pay for any idea that works on how to get that terrorist out of my tank.

 

[Kris.C]

Staring with a tank smaller than 50 G .. little did I know the Sps bug would bite .. when tank parameters go out of whack the change can be rather drastic in a small tank. On the plus side it can only get easier when I upgrade to a larger tank!