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

[lou dog420]

Added a yellow tang as one of my first fish, dumbest thing I've ever done!! But its ok, Im sure ill top that mistake someday.

 

[keddre]

l just replumbed my sump from Silicone hoses to Hard pipe. l didn’t have a problem with the Glue. Did you use CVPV or just regular PVC. CPVC is Nontoxic.

Pvc, I might have just put too much glue in some spots

 

[liveround69]

In the early days of my reefing experience i was told to top off with water and they didnt elaborate thus i used salt water instead of fresh. Killed my inverts like a poor arrow crab i named General Tso.

Also had a LFS sell me a mandarin goby just to get a sale. They told me it would be ok in my tank even though i told them the tank was only a few months old at the time. No time for pods to achieve large populations thus he starved.

The few times i added something without a quarantine tank I ended up with bryopsis and other nasties like nemertean worms. flatworms and aiptasia. The nemertean worms ended up killing about 4 of my clowns and numerous hermit crabs. I had to scrap the rock he was inside of and then i bought some more live rocks from the same place I got the mandarin goby from and got Brooklynella which killed 4 more clowns that i bought when i got the rocks. What a disaster that was. Sad all those creatures had to die for me to learn proper reef keeping.

Live and learn......

 

[Saumann7]

Not a catastrophic mistake but I once paid money for xenia not knowing that pretty much anyone will give it away

 

[jasonrusso]

I've made a few mistakes during my time in the hobby. Some took me longer to learn from, such as quarantining all new fish.

I think the biggest mistake I've made so far happened this year during the summer time. I had my doser offline as I was trying to do better cable management and rerunning my tubing. I don't have my sump under the stand, but it's in the garage on the other side of the wall behind my 155 gallon bowfront. Vinegar was one of the 3 things I was dosing and was doing this by hand while getting everything situated. After adding some in, I really had to run to the bathroom so I placed the full bottle of vinegar on top one of the tank braces, without the lid on it. I'm sure you can see where this is going. I thought it would be safe away from the kids and the dogs, and I was just running to the bathroom. I forgot I left the bottle there and went to sit down. Somehow, it fell into my tank. I looked over and saw my powder blue swimming really weird, and he wasn't blue anymore. I ran over, looked at my Apex's display and saw the pH dropped from 8.3 to 5.6. Lost 13 fish and several thousands in corals and anemones. I was ready to give up but my wife and kids talked me out of it. Plus the tank was my dad's. He gave it to me before he passed.

As bad as it hurt, it was a blessing in disguise. Found out the tank is 15+ years old and the silicone is almost gone in a few places. So I get to fix that before it became a problem. In addition, I drilled the tank so I no longer have to use a hang-on overflow box. I'm taking my time, but I'll be able to set it up correctly.

This is Sylvester, my only surviving fish from the disaster.

Puffers are the best!

 

[Erwan E]

We move from California to Arizona. I put all my corals and fish in a temporary tank waiting for my Red Sea 750 to arrive. I had my fish and corals for 6 years,beautiful grown corals and fish. I got so excited when te tank arrived that I only waited 2 weeks to dump everything in it. The water got cloudy and experienced a major bacteria problem. All my fish died and most of my corals suffered greatly. It took four weeks with daily filter cleaning and several weekly water changes to keep my corals alive.
Patience is a virtue!

 

[RussiReef]

I put a pair of flame wrasses in the tank with 6-line wrasse. He killed them withing a week .

 

[LordWithBee]

Jumping into the hobby

 

[CanadianReefer]

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

Lol .... Yeah, that about sums it up nicely!!

Mine was a big alkalinity spike because of a faulty dosing pump. I was being lazy about testing and it wasn't until I noticed the physical signs of duress that I'd realized what had happened.

I lost a beautiful Kole tang who I had had for quite some time, along with many corals. My alk level was in the 20s!

I'm actually surprised I didn't lose everything. Took forever to get back under control.

 

[Atif]

I ad koran angel and biocolor angel in my reef and ..............

 

[Atif]

I ad koran angel & biocolor angel in my reef ..........

 

[Centerline]

Killed a frag tank that had a little over 20k in rainbow chalices by over dosing kalk and then over reacting when trying to brink the alk back down. Very, very depressing. Nearly made me give up the hobby.

 

[madducks42]

We've had our tank up and running for almost a year and I feel like we make a major mistake every 2 months, lol. At this point we've lost 6 fish in 2 months, including a purple tang that we should not have gotten so early on. And we're having major dino problems on the sandbed. But all of our corals are thriving : )

 

[count krunk]

I had a 55g that was holding fish from a 29g. The 55g sump was still being plumbed. The heater was in the tank, and the heaters sensor was in the sump.. tank got to 86 degrees before i realized my mistake. Thankfully, no fish died. Lots of coral did though

 

[derek yoonie]

While working at an LFS, I accidentally gave a customer who was doing a large water change on his reef filtered fresh water instead of saltwater. Found out years later his entire reef died due to my mistake. I think that guy still hates me to this day.

you ****** up lol

 

[Adele]

you ****** up lol

I always taste my water before putting in the tank. Yeah you messed up but part of that was on him too.

 

[tony'stank]

Years ago when I lived in AZ I decided to redo my aquas cape. I sent up a temporary holding tank inside for my fish and corals. I set up a kiddy pool outside for my live rock. I underestimated the time it would take. The live rock had Palys on it and I did not know about palytoxin. I let one of my dogs out to do her business. She took a drink from the live rock pool and poisoned herself and died. I was heartsick. I almost left the hobby because of this

 

[b4tn]

My worst mistake is two fold. First letting my alcohol addiction get ahold of me and second is leaving unexpectadly for treatment for 6 weeks, no phone, no internet, and no one in my house trained to take care for my reef. Feeding was heavy, water changes where not done, top offs where only done when the pumps started making noise, and all dosers where empty. I lost a lot.

 

[NY_Caveman]

Thank you for sharing that. Hope all is well. It is a lesson many of us can learn from. It is also a great reminder to have someone trained and ready to tend to the reef.

 

[ca1ore]

I'd have to go with getting myself roped into this hobby in the first place ..... though it's been 30 years and I almost successfully quit once ..... almost. As for stupid things, well that's a very long list.