What is the Smelliest part of owning a SW tank?

[Grimm_Medic]

+1 on dead turbo snails, especially when the smell of death seeps into the hand you picked it up with!

 

[savetheocean]

I had a couple snails come in the mail dead so I threw them away in the trash can because I had to acclimate the others! Long story short I forgot about them for a couple days and the smell got so bad I thought a rat died in the walls.

 

[coachklc]

I have not had a saltwater tank in several years but am planning on getting one going soon. I had a 55 gallon tank when I lived in the Bahamas. I had to look up Bio pellets since they didn't exist then. All my filtration was bacterial. I built an under-gravel filter out of an egg-crate florescent light cover, fiberglass screening, pvc spacers and lift tubes and an air pump. I had it partially in front of a window, since that's the only place i had it would fit and had snails to keep the resulting garden trimmed. A variety of worms and crabs to control detritus and vacuumed it once a month. 10% sanitized water changes every week. Never had any smell other than salt air.

I have always lived within a 10 minute drive from the ocean or salt water rivers so think some of the issues may be relayed to not having a ready source of fresh salt water.

 

[Squishie89]

Protein skimmer or dead clam/snails/mollusks

 

[Kevin Revallo]

leaving Silver Sides in small bowl to thaw and forgot about them for a few days... looking in my tank for something dead... everytime I walked by I "got that smell" drove us nuts - then found it... skimmer tied for worst...

 

[PlanB]

cycling. stinks to heavens.

 

[ccbobafett]

When I find the shrimp and silversides I left almost a week ago to thaw out[emoji13]

 

[Zack K]

A sulfur denitrator that was left off for a week.... OMG so much worse than any skimmate I have smelled.

This has to top the Biopellets

 

[Renelope]

Probably the protein skimmer water.

+1 makes me gag

 

[smokin'reefer]

Me after I've done 3 water changes emptied 2 skimmers and rinsed 10+ filter socks.

 

[Bruce Burnett]

sulfur denitrator, stagnant bio pellet reactor and skimmer all about the same

 

[Fin]

Expired Mexican turbos. You think they're just sleeping, but they're just fermenting bombs waiting to go off when you take them out of the water.

I will ditto this. These are not little snails. The ones I had were like 2"+. I learned to put them into a container under water first, then take them out of the tank and into the trash - while hoping it wasn't a whole week for the trash to pick up.

But the worst was when I lost my 75 gallon reef during the power outage following Hurricane Rita. We were under a mandatory evacuation and it was 10 days before they would let us back in. No power for 10 days in 90 degree heat. That was the worst of all. Pretty freaking sad too.

 

[redfishbluefish]

Agree with dead snails. I had a very large Mexican Turbo and wasn't sure if it was dead....it was dead, and my nose suffered, with a bit of gagging as well.

And of course skimmate....I have a collector that brews for about a month or so....pretty stinky.

A carbon reactor with a broken pump that sits and stews for a month has a pretty strong sulphur smell....nasty.

 

[penguin_free]

When I'm down on my knees fishing around in the sump, and one of the dogs walks by and crop dusts me ! ugh

 

[Mark-Stover]

When I'm down on my knees fishing around in the sump, and one of the dogs walks by and crop dusts me ! ugh

Crop dusts you! Bahahaha....now that’s funny!

 

[Reef Pets]

Dead snail

 

[jasonrusso]

I have a big MRC scum tank for my skimmer. It has a carbon filter on it for the smell but it doesn't help when you dump out the tank, lol.

Now, people say biopellets smell, but the scum from the skimmer when you run biopellets is just as bad, also when carbon dosing (or No4Pox dosing)

 

[Reefbuds]

Definitely skimmate, if I let it go for a while it's terrible.

 

[TikiBird]

It's so sad to hear the stories of you guys losing your tanks because of power outages etc [emoji20] As if the loss isn't enough, to have to deal with the smell too. Ugh.

I don't have a protein skimmer so I don't have the skimmate to worry about! But when I opened the box of my live rocks (almost dead rocks) that had shipped across the country...that was pretty bad.

Also, Prime stinks. I don't know why. If I open the bottle my family can smell it in the other room.

 

[pdxmonkeyboy]

funny story. when I was getting my wildlife science degree we had to mount a mammal for extra credit and got access to the specimen dryer. well, we went to the coast that weekend, smoked a lot of weed and i found a cool dead starfish. I went in to the lab on Sunday and put the starfish in the specimen drying oven.

When I went to class on monday all the windows were open and they had fans in the doors. The building absolutely stunk so bad.. it was like low tide mixed with road kill.

My mammalogy teacher asked us "which one of you brainiacs put the starfish in the specimen dryer?"

Nobody said a thing but we had a good laugh afterwards.