Stupid accidents that you have made...

[JPM San Diego]

I am new to R2R. Hopes it's allowed to mention a freshwater mishap.
In my office I installed a "natural" planted freshwater aquarium. I used old fashioned, 100% pure clay, kitty litter covered by sand as the substrate. It worked great and I had quite the display tank. My co-worker decided to set up a tank in his office just like mine. However, he missed the part about old fashion 100% clay and just bought kitty litter. It looked great at the start, but then the substrate kept getting deeper and deeper. Some areas began to swell more than others and looked suspiciously like volcanos.
Soon his volcanoes began erupting spewing kitty litter up and over all his plants.
Lesson: don't use clumping kitty litter for substrate!

 

[piranhaman00]

Common one, but I fill 5 gallon buckets with RODI water. On multiple occasions I Have been able to go for a run while the bucket is filling. Well, last weekend I must have ran my 5 miles slower then normal, came home and water was everywhere.

 

[piranhaman00]

Getting a reef lobster and putting him in a tank with a lionfish and angler. Both fish are now dead and I had to give the lobster my frag tank.

I am interested in reef lobsters, are they not good for fish? Haha

 

[DSEKULA]

Oh boy lol... I've made Soo many not all necessarily salt water specific..

First tank I tried to build I tried to combine acrylic and glass and silicone it together, thankfully I was intelligent enough to test outside.

Placed my tank directly over my sump, sump in stand and placed surge strips on the floor while I did an over flow test... It overflowed on the electric.

Installed an ro tap under my kitchen sink to fill buckets with no shut off or floor drain, started filling a five gallon and got an emergency call for work. Now I have a float switch on the fill station.

When I started reefing tried to dose all additives to red seas recommendations at once, killing alot of stock on this one.

Install an emergency line horizontal in a way that collects muck, leave it closed for a year or so and then open in one shot to do some maintenance releasing hydrogen sulfide into the tank and air. Immediately turned on air pump and stock was auctually ok but house smelled like rotten eggs for two days.

Turned skimmer up all the way in one clip emptying the sump in two days, I figured it out when the heater melted the plastic.

Using a tool in the tank (like fraging etc) and then since your hands are full placing the end in mouth to hold (like many do with pens) YUCK!

Don't check if a tank is tempered before trying to drill and finding it is when it shatters.

Not using a lid with fish that are prone to jump.

Listened to a lfs when I started, they told me 50% wc daily were a must also sold me all kinds of stuff that was not appropriate for a new tank. Some of my first additions were a bubble tip and sea apple .

When I was much younger I tried to place a tank on a floating shelf that wasn't even drilled to studs.

I hung lights over a tank in such a way that I would bump them each time I had to reach in the tank, didn't think anything of this untill one day I bumped and they fell in.

Always double check and research your own stock from others not trying to sell you the stock, my worst experience was as a 5yo child a lfs told me that I could house guppies with a red ear slider (turtle) I was mentally scared when they were lunch and since have witnessed many lfs spouting garbage to make a sale.

Never assume a fish is dead if it's swimming all day and lays on the bottom or rock at night... Noone told me many reef fish sleep and I scared myself and a wrasse.

 

[Indytraveler83]

Never assume a fish is dead if it's swimming all day and lays on the bottom or rock at night... Noone told me many reef fish sleep and I scared myself and a wrasse.

This just reminded me of an "almost" mistake.

My two clownfish bob on the surface of the water, sometimes up against the overflow when sleeping. They look flat out dead, and usually are laying sideways on the surface of the water motionless.

My first week with them I went to the tank at night with a red light to spy on my CuC in action, only to find the clowns motionless on the surface of the water.

Angry, I grab a net and scoop them, not even bothering to turn on a light. Well I must have jumped high enough to hit the ceiling and dropped the net when they both startled awake and began thrashing.

Took about 30 minutes of panic before I found they'd both managed to jump back into the tank (and not the floor) and we're hiding behind rockwork, likely cursing at me.

Since then, if a fish isn't being eaten by the CuC, it isn't dead...

 

[DungSl1nger]

I made the mistake of buying rock that looked like the BRS video rock thinkI got it was going to be easily formable, it wasn’t and at day three with 2 broke Bandsaw blades a cutting blade, and what one would call excessive hammer violence not working, I gave up. My aquascape is meh.

Who needs about 12 brand new unions, made the same order twice and then decided I wasn’t going to use them.

Finished making water and forgot to turn it off for 2 days, fortunately, I was just flushing the system.

Bought my first two corals, went from bag to dip in my excitement completely forgetting the acclimation step, they both live but I suspect they are still angry at me. Along those lines I made an impulse but of a long tentacle anemone and assumed the white cuts on its foot were substrate from the tank. It died

Finally, ordering white worms from Amazon during a hot week thinking they would be ok because the supplier knew what they were doing, nope dead. So if you want to part with some white worms let me know.

 

[Peach02]

CP will kill anthias and hippo tangs.

The more you know, I’d seen it suggested for them

 

[pdxmonkeyboy]

The more you know, I’d seen it suggested for them

I don't know why people seem so bent on suggesting things when they are not certain about them. It is well known that CP will crush anthias in short order. The hippo tang is hit or miss but mostly advise avoiding treating them with CP. There is another fish that they say to avoid. It is listed in the humblefish thread on CP.

Have a good forth everyone!

 

[Bam327]

My first tank I flooded my apartment and my girlfriends (now wife’s) closet ruining anything she had on the floor. Mostly shoes. Took 13 years to convince her for a new tank. Which I now have with a flood guardian.
With the new tank the worst thing I’ve done so far is kill a BTA by ripping its foot pulling a rock out. I really beat myself up about that one. It happened on Father’s Day and my wife told me to go get a new one (didn’t have to ask me twice) and the new one is very temperamental. It’s doing fine but is much more moody than the previous one. My wife named it Karen.

 

[SuncrestReef]

While swapping out my powerheads for routine cleaning, I didn't notice that I put the spare Gyre in the tank upside down. When I turned it on, it shot a jet of water about 12" straight up out of the tank and onto my UPS battery sitting on the floor. (It normally pushes water sideways and down). I quickly turned off the Gyre and wiped off the UPS with a towel. I flipped the UPS upside down so any water that went into the air vents would hopefully drain out. The UPS seemed fine for about 20 minutes, but then suddenly my entire tank shut down and the UPS started squealing a horribly loud alarm. I unplugged it and tried to turn it off, but none of the buttons would respond, including the alarm silence button. I had to disconnect the battery to silence it. Even after letting it dry out for days, it never worked again and I had to replace the UPS. The new UPS is much further from the tank now, and I always take note of the Gyre orientation before re-mounting it.

 

[Kris 2020]

I bought a blue spot jawfish because I always wanted one even though I run a topless tank. I knew they were jumpers and big fat did it anyway.

i moved my return jets around some when I got a new powerhead trying to remove dead spots. I moved them lower in the tank. I almost never shut off my return pump, but it was time to clean the return pump and it’s chamber so I shut it down and watched in shock as my basement sump overflowed...and it just kept coming as I struggled to turn the valve to stop it. It had been so long since I had moved the return jets that it took me a bit to figure out what was wrong...soooo I was really lucky there wasn’t a power outage in the meantime! Also good to give your valves a turn now and then to keep them moving smoothly. After this is also turned the pump back on with the valve closed.

 

[Shawn_epicurious]

Left my skimmer running after I started a water change... OMG dirty bubbles for days inside my cabinet. It took three weeks for my skimmer to settle down and normalize! ...I didn’t loose any livestock... just lots of cleaning time

 

[dtruitt]

Didnt put the screen on the intake of a HOB filter. Picked up a pair of clowns. Within a day, one of the clowns got sucked into the filter.

Crushed a firefish rearranging rocks.

 

[AllanPritchard]

I had a newbie mistake (still a newbie really) setup my RO unit (Dupla) instructions were terrible. Turned it on and had one side with quite a bit of water coming out and the other a small trickle. Assumed the small trickle was the waste water...wrong. filled 600lt display tank with the dirtiest water possible from an RO unit while the purist water went to feed my tomato plants.

 

[bweltsch]

Rubbed my eye after fragging Paly's. Some hospitals have really nice emergency rooms, although they don't really know much about palytoxin poisoning.

 

[Iudicello1080]

Way too funny just checked my email after water change mistake! Scrubbing glass with magnetic scrubber siphoning water at same time and the end of hose touched my splatter hammer and about five or six hammers got suck off!! So not cool!

 

[Bosreef]

I set my new AI Prime 16 down on the couch while I waited for the app to go through its several minutes long start up procedure. I came back to a smoking couch because the program auto starts at 100%. I feel like this should not be the default setting.

Ok thank you soooo much for this.

I'm still kicking myself for this.

 

[reefer2000]

I figured this might be a good way for people to learn from OTHER peoples mistakes. Everyone makes them, and aquariums seem like a running muprhy's law example. So without further ado.. here is a list of totally stupid things I did that resulted in fish death/tank woes.

1. I had a beautiful achilies in QT with copper. Ammonia was creeping up, I didn't want to heat water for a water change..SO.. I added a cap ful of prime. Prime + copper equals toxic copper... fish dead next morning.

2. Had a friend over picking out some frags.. "man, that closed loop intake screen is filthy". .. yeah, I have been meaning to clean that ..I pull it off and throw in vinegar. Need to remember to shut the loop pump off. ... 4 hours later. bzzzzzz... what's that noise? Blue throat trigger and red tailed tamarin wrasse died in the CL inlet pipe.

3. Bought 15 anthias put in QT. didn't start copper yet. Added molly's from petco to the tank. One anthias dead...two...three. what the heck? 50% water change, added some antibiotics. three dead the next morning. "It has to be poor water quality in the small QT" Panic and threw them in my DT. four days later.. massive velvet and Euronema break out.

4. And lastly... on the wifes tank. "I think my wrasse jumped out and the cats ate him" "probably". The tank is noisy. Man, that tank is noisy. A week of listening to it. Then about 1:30AM I think... OMG.. that fish is probably stuck in the siphon tube!!! Opened it up full boar..out he plopped (he limped along for like 4 days then died). I felt absolutely horrible. I am quite certain then when I die, I am going to wake up in a closed tube full of rushing water.


Anyone else care to share? Come on now... fess up!

Rookie mistake. Dumping calcium into 40 gallon mixed reef to get from 290 to 420. Well you know what happened next. White water, corals burned tank crashed everything died. Hard way to learn to always mix it in water.

 

[92Miata]

Like 3 hours ago:


My wife has two biota mandarins in her IM Nuvo Fusion tank - and one has been getting picked on - so I decided to move it to our quarantine tank (which has been fishless for a while, and is covered in pods and algae).

In the process of trying to catch it, I managed to spook it into jumping into the return compartment in the back of the tank. For anyone who has never seen an IM tank - about 80% of that compartment is completely inaccessible.

So I was like - I can't leave him in there - so I started to pull the return pump - and it clipped the edge of the mount for the lights - which toppled over into the tank and promptly turned off, dead.

Undeterred, I pulled them out, unplugged them, and continued. I couldn't figure out which side of the ridiculous compartment the fish was in, so I stuck in my IP68 rated Moto X4 phone recording video, and figured out which side he was on. Then the phone started flickering and the screen died. Crap.


So the tank is back together, I need new lights and a new phone, and the mandarin is still in the dang return section.

 

[stacksoner]

Common one, but I fill 5 gallon buckets with RODI water. On multiple occasions I Have been able to go for a run while the bucket is filling. Well, last weekend I must have ran my 5 miles slower then normal, came home and water was everywhere.

Wait, there's a way to fill up a bucket w RODI without watching it and not flood the house?