It’s sad but it’s a reminder! What’s the worst thing you ever did in this hobby?

[revhtree]

Man oh man I cringe when I see photos of dead fish and coral. I was surfing Facebook today and my feed included a photo of several beautiful but dead saltwater fish on a napkin including what looked to be a Picasso clown.

It got me thinking about how I could never share a photo like that from my own mistakes but that didn’t change the fact that I have had those same type mistakes.

Looking back I have had many mistakes and some that still haunt me. Like the time I was taking a few weeks to transfer livestock from a holding tank to a new tank that hadn’t arrived yet and I got lazy and allowed the ammonia to spike and lost all of my fish. Beautiful pair of Picasso clown, wrasse, mated pair of Bangaii cardinals and more. I let down the fish that trusted me to feed and care for them.

Ah....reliving it really stinks and saddens me but it’s an important reminder and lesson for others to be vigilant in caring for our fishy friends.

So what about you?
What lesson do you have to share?
What is your story?

What’s the worst thing you have done in this hobby?

Gone but not forgotten....gerrrg I’m so stupid!

 

[Waters]

Well, probably my first saltwater tank, as a young 16 year old. It was a 29 gallon masterpiece with a large Lion, two Picasso Triggers, a large moray, and several Damsels. Needless to say, I had fish aggression and hair algae issues If only the internet was available to me back then like it is now.......sad to think back on all the advice the LFS gave me, selling me all those fish for that sized tank.

 

[Heliarc19]

Twice I didn’t have any plan for power outage, nothing. Just laziness I guess. Killed a lot of livestock because I didn’t want or think I needed it. I have battery backup now and a generator.

 

[Davy Jones]

Bought a tank off of craigslist on a whim one day, no research, no knowledge. I was 15 years old and thought it would be cool to keep a saltwater fish tank. Went out to petco and bought a couple butterfly fish, 2 flame angel and a blue tang (to go along with the clown pair, 3 damslefish, blenny and whatever else came with the initial 55 gallon tank) brought them home and dumped the fish (AND WATER) into the tank and was happy as can be. 2 weeks later (imagine that..) they all got ich and died.

 

[Dabbin_with_reefs]

I was at work one day and my wrasse jumped out my tank. He was the second fish I bought and at the time the most pricey fish I bought. I came home and went to put my coat in the closet when I heard a crunch and felt something under my foot. That something was my poor wrasse just dead and dried out.
Thing that stunk the worse was I had the day off that day but went to cater a party for the owner. And my most recent one was my Wyoming white clown. Had two for six months or so and just last month came home to find the male dead stuck against my powerhead [emoji17]

 

[Ashish Patel]

My first 29 gallon - I bleached dead coral skeleton (like the LFS said) and rinsed few times and put back in the tank. Lost everything in the tank.. This was back in 97 and still the worst moment for me

 

[Sea MunnKey]

Majority of my fish died from old age and one time tank crash. I don't really own a lot of fish since I first got into this hobby but my wife "insists" that I should add fish to the tank regardless ...

To "embalm" the physical memory, I'd use a paper towel & dry it thoroughly, laying it flat on a styrofoam tray (not decomposed) and quickly place it in the freezer for as long as possible. I find it's the easiest method to rid & extract of all the liquid from inside the fish. Kinda like a dried fish. Most times the actual colors stays the same & when it's time to remove from the freezer, you may smell a slight "dry fish" odour but in a short while it'll fade away.

I'll try to locate the bunch of fish which I've collected all these years and snap a couple of pictures later ....

If you wish frame it in a box!

 

[Ashish Patel]

Majority of my fish died from old age and one time tank crash. I don't really own a lot of fish since I first got into this hobby but my wife "insists" that I should add fish to the tank regardless ...

To "embalm" the physical memory, I'd use a paper towel & dry it thoroughly, laying it flat on a styrofoam tray (not decomposed) and quickly place it in the freezer for as long as possible. I find it's the easiest method to rid & extract of all the liquid from inside the fish. Kinda like a dried fish. Most times the actual colors stays the same & when it's time to remove from the freezer, you may smell a slight "dry fish" odour but in a short while it'll fade away.

I'll try to locate the bunch of fish which I've collected all these years and snap a couple of pictures later ....

If you wish frame it in a box!

that does remind me back in the day I actually did freeze a copperband butterfly fish. But for another reason..back then you had to take you dead fish back to the LFS to get credit.. sounds very nasty now that i think about it. I would not recommend it to embalm a fish better of just seeing it in pictures.

 

[Radman73]

Worst thing I've done is a tough one. I've actually been pretty careful and, to my knowledge, haven't done anything that led directly to deaths. Except ordering fish. Last month ordered 6 Dispar Anthias to go into my new(to me) 220. All 6 died in QT. Extremely frustrating. I've lost a few fish over the years but, other than 2(out of 12), all were with me for at least a year and most for 3+ years. One died in QT and another a disappeared a few months after I bought it. I lost a YWG to jumping, a 6-line wrasse at the 3 year point, and a tail-spot blenny after 4 years. So I killed, or at least failed to save, more fish in 2 weeks than the previous 7 years combined. Yay.

 

[Sea MunnKey]

Believe me ... the dead fish don't come back to haunt me or claim their bodies

 

[bdejong1112o]

Impulse buy of an elegance coral which did not survive. Did not research it enough and bought it on impulse. I am responsible for what i put into my tank and that one was my mistake. Hate to see any animal die and i will not do that again. I will ensure that I am ready before jumping that deep down the rabbit hole the next time.

I get it that sometimes things die or we make mistakes but if i had just slowed down and said let me go check this out before plunking it into the tank it would have not been introduced at this time.

Going to try and do better in the future.

 

[Victoria M]

I got teary eye sitting in City Q BBQ remembering my stoopid thing. All my fish died from cramming them in too small of a tank while I treated the DT. GEESH, I am still grieving the loss...

 

[Dsnakes]

When I was in middle school I begged my parents for a saltwater tank. They finally gave in and I had a 55g tank full of live rock and anemones (aiptasia) and a pair of clowns that I fed well. Couldn't believe how much salt creep was on my wall. I had always topped off with more salt water.... oh the woes of being a kid and not know anything! Yes everything died.

Death and destruction aside, I am thankful for the fact that my mother took me to pick out everything I needed and allowed me to have it. I just wish we would've known more about what we were doing.

 

[JaimeAdams]

I bought a condy anemone once.

When we moved several years back I moved the sand bead and killed all of my fish, back them I was keeping fuzzy dwarf lion fish. I had a bunch of them, yellows, reds, and my very first salt water fish (also a fuzzy dwarf). I was heart broken.

 

[Greybeard]

Getting out.

A little over a decade back, I had a 240... DSB, mixed reef... My wife's father got sick, and I had to take care of our four daughters. Tank was completely neglected for about 5 months. After my father in law's funeral, I looked the tank over, and found that the watermelon mushrooms that I had on a small rock really liked the dirty water... they grew over _everything_ in the tank. Killed all my LPS, SPS, even a Deresa clam that I'd grown from a couple of inches to nearly a foot long. All gone.

Tore the tank down, sold everything off at fire sale prices, used the mushroom covered live rock to fill a hole in the back yard, and was out of the hobby for a decade. Missed it something awful. I'm happy to be back.

 

[S-t-r-e-t-c-h]

As an individual:
My first reef tank, I killed probably a dozen nps gorgonians in the first year before I appreciated what I was doing wrong. eek

Working for a LFS:
That one time that I sold a 6" maroon clown to a guy looking to pair up with his existing 3" maroon clown. "It should be fine," I said. He was back within an hour, fortunately didn't kill his pet... Big oops on my part before I understood the intricacies of clownfish sex change...

On a forum:
This one probably haunts me the most...

Cruising a reef forum and answering questions for a guy having issues with a tridacna clam. I was rattling off things that he could try. I mentioned that a freshwater dip could be an option. Very next post was something to the effect of "Ok I have it in tap water, now what?" I tried to reel it back in and have him stop what he was doing and get the clam back in the tank, but it felt like things cascaded out of control in slow motion. I was completely dumbfounded... and then, what seemed like the rest of the forum descended...

Update a week later and the clam was dead. That was a big eye-opener for me and, probably more than any experience IRL, taught me to be VERY careful with my words.

 

[revhtree]

Thanks for sharing everyone! It's good to learn from others mistakes!

 

[GoVols]

Done to many stupid things to list like adding a $700 10" Banana Eel and all it's bio-load in our reef ;Wacky

But the worst was in 2008, when we had an ole MH lighting 29 gallon bio cube reef, that was perfection.
We went to Florida that summer for a one week vacation. While we were gone our central heat and air had gone out. When we got home from vacation our home was in the upper 90's and that little reef was a total loss

The stench just added to the loss and I never fired up another reef until early 2010, when my wife asked me to.

Since that time we always have a chiller online and it saved our current reef awhile back when the AC went out in our town home.

Didn't have to float ice as it just purred away as needed until our AC was fixed that evening ;Woot ;Woot

 

[Syed123]

Deep sand bed. I'm not trying to rail on people with DSP's but mine was an utter failure in my former 30 gallon tank. Even though I would clean it with a vac, I constantly had nutrient and algae issues.I really only kept it for my Long tentacle anemone. Well no more DSP's for me!

Also another epic failure was introducing a Kole tang into my tank...which I didn't quarantine. Wiped out my whole tank with a combination of brooklynella, velvet, fin rot and ich. So a cocktail of nasty parasites wiping out fish that I kept for 3 years.

Pic of the 30 gallon with the 4-5 inch sand bed.

 

[4FordFamily]

Stubbornly avoiding quarantine and continuing to kill fish unnecessarily for years, seeking only information that furthered my belief that one could feed parasites away and maintain clean water and ignoring my losses for the few gains.

Now that I quarantine I can see how horrible it truly was. My success rate with even expert level fish has improved several hundred times.