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

[olecaptainj]

Using gfo

 

[savetheocean]

This one is just sad and has haunted me

Long story short a coral was ordered to the wrong place and never found again. It sickens me to even think about it.

 

[DanConnor]

 

[Victoria M]

gosh, Dan, that looks like you were lucky not to burn your whole home down. That is scary.

 

[DanConnor]

Yep, it was terrible. Back in the 90s. We were on vacation at the time- I think the breaking tank put the fire out. No more under-tank sumps for me after that.

 

[DanConnor]

It was a sweet little reef

 

[lauderdalestunner]

I built a speargun with an aluminum Slurpee straw, a tig rod and a rubber band. I had a few camel shrimp I no longer wanted.....

 

[Scorpius]

Letting my HOB skimmer overflow while at work. Stupidly had my power strip on the floor beneath the skimmer. Almost burned the house down. Thankfully the family was home to catch it in time.

 

[Mal11224]

I think a lot of the bad things I did were in the beginning stages of starting my tank. I have been good with keeping fish with the occasional jumping wrasses but not as successful with corals until after about 6 months.
1. Adding a nigerbtrigger to my tank, which was my first fish. He was good until he reached 6" and I was dealing with one mean $&@&$$!??. I caught him and he has been rehomed. He would shift sand in the tank like 3 gobies. Chased all of the fish. He was beautiful but had to go.
2. Probably the worst thing for me because I was lazy. I did not use a fastener on my hose attached to my return pump when I set it up. Tank was running for a while and as soon as I leave the house to go to the store, my wife is calling me saying that water is spraying everywhere. Fuge was practically empty with about 15 - 20 gallons of water on the floor. Was not one of my best moments and needless to say, I learned my lesson.

 

[Adele]

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.

Lol on filling the hole. I just changed from a 65 to 90 and got all new substrate of course. After dumping all the old stuff in the gravel drive just outside my garage I thought, gravel, sand good place for it. Now every night when I drive in directly over the old sand I bring a little back in on my two right tires. A lovely trail of beach right in the garage. [emoji19]

 

[chaoticreefer]

According to my wallet, the worse thing I have ever done in this hobby was getting into it.

 

[4FordFamily]

According to my wallet, the worse thing I have ever done in this hobby was getting into it.

HEARD

 

[Bcdjoe]

Over the years I have purchased two interuptus angle fish and lost both of them. At 2K a piece that hurt.

 

[Ferrell]

Took too long of a hiatus from the hobby.
Glad to be back

 

[dede]

Killed my phantom clown after I forgot to put the guard back on the power head after cleaning the tank and it got sucked into the intake. Think I would have learned my lesson but I did it again a month later and killed a nice fire fish the same way. I changed the style of power head after that since I couldn't trust myself not to do it again. IDIOT!!!!

 

[yort265]

Does spending too much money count?

 

[NY_Caveman]

This was not me, but I was right there. I used to work in a nice pet store in Long Island, NY with a huge saltwater selection. Helped me fill some of my early tanks. One of my co-workers was a little guy, but no slouch (he was a hockey goalie). He was feeding a lionfish some feeders by hand not paying close attention and, you guessed it, he got stung. Scared the crap out of me. He ended up in the hospital for a bit from his reaction to the venom, but recovered fine.

Since then, whenever I work in and around tanks I go overboard with gloves, heavy duty respirators, safety glasses, etc. While handling I have had anemones and zoas spit up at me, unexpected critters climb on me out from live rock, even had a big sailfin tang try to swipe me. There is some dangerous stuff amidst the beauty in our aquariums.

 

[MaiReef]

Valuing numbers over stability

 

[keddre]

It's a toss up:
1: I didn't set my tank up with a sump, so when I added one on later, I didn't let it sit long enough. Even after half an hour, some pvc glue made it into my display and killed most of my fish.
Or
2: I moved my one year old sea hare into my sump, forgetting that they are short lived animals. The "little" fella tried to take my whole tank with him when he died

 

[Paul B]

When I was younger and stupider and had more hair, I sometimes would use Clorox to purify NSW from a beach.
I was worried about things then that I am not concerned with now.
For years I used Regular Clorox and everything was fine.
Then I used "New Fresh Scent Clorox" by accident and did a water change with that water.
Almost instantly fish started jumping out. I lost most of my fish including an 18 year old brutlyd (cusk eel) very old mandarin, Moorish idol and almost everything else. My fireclown made it through for some reason and is now 26 so maybe it made him immortal.
The corals were not affected as much but they now had a nice fresh scent.
I immediately took out the living fish that I could find and threw them in the old water. Then I carbon filtered the tank water for a day or so while I mixed up new water. I had to wait for my ro/di to make about 60 gallons of water.
The tank recovered but it took over a year before my fireclown looked me in the eye.