What's the dumbest thing you have done in the hobby

[DanATL]

I picked up some frags from a LFS yesterday and ran them through some DipX before putting them in my tank. For some reason I read the 100:1 DipX to water ratio but mixed it as 10:1. Just dawned on me this morning. Will have to see if any of those survive.

 

[Mikuchar]

Too many to mention. Dosing stuff that was recommended when watching videos on you tube when I first got into hobby. Fought cyno than dyno for up to a year. Learned keep it simple and stable. The worst was letting my guard down and not dipping a couple times and got an outbreak of acro eating flatworms which whipped out all my acros except my purple stylo and green slimer about $4000 worth of frags!

 

[Forty-Two]

Trusting my testing equipment and then buying gear or additives based on that info only to find out that many of the test kits are a ‘best guess’ - and then having said gear sit around and be useless.

 

[World Citizen]

Getting stung by a Toxopneustes Pileolus.

I wrote a piece on it in Dutch, but here is the link in translator. I could write it down in English if it's hard to understand.

(hedgehog means Urchin )

Toxopneustes pileolus - een zee-egel met wat risico's - AquaInfo

Toxopneustes pileolus - een zee-egel met wat risico's! Deze zee-egel is fantastisch om naar te kijken, fraaie kleuren en het uiterlijk van een boeket bloemen....maar wel met een risico!

aquainfo-nl.translate.goog

 

[flyingscampi]

Mixing a new batch of seawater and tipping it into the wrong container half full of RO/DI, then doing a largish water change which dropped the salinity by 2.0 ppt. Nothing harmed fortunately but it took a couple of hours to sort out the mess.

 

[Alexraptor]

Years ago, I bought a baby Snowflake Moray for my 15g, and tried to house him with my Tiger Pistol..... yeah, the Tiger Pistol didn't last the night, and the moray was returned the next day.

 

[Karen00]

Getting stung by a Toxopneustes Pileolus.

I wrote a piece on it in Dutch, but here is the link in translator. I could write it down in English if it's hard to understand.

(hedgehog means Urchin )

Toxopneustes pileolus - een zee-egel met wat risico's - AquaInfo

Toxopneustes pileolus - een zee-egel met wat risico's! Deze zee-egel is fantastisch om naar te kijken, fraaie kleuren en het uiterlijk van een boeket bloemen....maar wel met een risico!

aquainfo-nl.translate.goog

That is a crazy story but what a beautiful urchin! I don't think I would've recognized it as one. I'm glad you recovered from the experience and weren't too badly affected. Lucky for you.

 

[Ryde]

I joined the hobby thinking I wouldn't get addicted. Man was I wrong, and my wallet hurts for it.

 

[kpoj9]

forgetting that I was making RODI and flooding my laundry room. not once, not twice, not three…but 4 dang times.

 

[Alexraptor]

forgetting that I was making RODI and flooding my laundry room. not once, not twice, not three…but 4 dang times.

Honestly? That's pretty much a weekly occurrence for me, but at least I have a drain next to the container.

 

[Anemone_Fanatic]

Used the same pipette for fish food and water testing... Ammonia was shown at 2 ppm. After a minute of panic, I tried a different pipette. 0 ppm, as expected. I added my first corals on week 3, and the results were as could be expected. I also used the algaecide that shall not be named, killing a trachy. And those are just the ones I can remember.

 

[RedoubtReef]

When I had my custom 80 gallon built, I should have made it 4" taller to 24" and 36" wide instead of 20" so that it would be the tank I want today.

 

[Ryde]

forgetting that I was making RODI and flooding my laundry room. not once, not twice, not three…but 4 dang times.

I'm not going to say it but I in the same boat.

 

[Nano New]

I've done a number of stupid things but the stupidest was when I was doing water change in my nano tank and I was really tired (never do important things when you are really tired). When I checked the salinity it was down too much so instead of mixing some salt in a bucket of water I POURED THE SALT DIRECTLY INTO THE TANK! And onto my very first coral, a frogspawn. Froggy has got to be the most forgiving coral EVER. He survived that and other newbie mistakes. The last one was when I didn't realise I'd knocked the wavemaker loose when I was doing some cleaning and when I turned it on, it blasted poor Froggy and he lost half is personhood.

He's recovering (again!) from my idiocy. I swear Froggy has got to be the toughest coral alive after surviving a year and a half with me.

 

[Reef and Dive]

In the beginning I used to feed my hermits with ham.

 

[Sdbuehler1]

About 15 years ago I bought a 30 inch tall acrylic tank with a built-in internal overflow. I set it up in my family room, filled it up with water and turned on the pump for the first time and it sounded like Niagra Falls. My wife immediately came into the room with the biggest what the heck expression on her face. I thought to myself , oh my god what have I done, we will never be able to hear the TV over this noise. Then I did some research and learned that I need to make a standpipe for the overflow.. crisis averted!

 

[Floyd-]

It only seemed right to me when I lost water I had to put some more salt water back in to top it off... After a very high salinity test came up I figured it out quick and started topping off with RODI.

 

[ClownSchool]

I’m new to reefing. Started March, 2021. Ranked in order of stupidity:
1- added my very first coral - a frog spawn - to a tank filled with salt-mixed tap water.
2- I dipped my testing vials directly into the tank to retrieve samples. Poisoned the tank with the reaction agent residue in the vials from the previous tests.
I lost $100s in corals.
3- I invited about six people to stay where they all shared the same guest bathroom with the door less than ten feet from my DT.
I didn’t know until they left that they were using aerosol Frebreeze, body sprays, and hair spray throughout an entire week.
My tank was poisoned again. I lost all my stylophora (one was a birds nest that was my second largest colony in the tank about the size of a softball), lost a plate coral, pipefish, bunch of crabs and snails, and all my millepora, Walt Disney and Bill Murray washed out.

 

[RichReef]

Trusting a TM hydrometer. Had my salt level at 1.035.

Spent hundreds and months trying to fix a problem I couldn't see.

 

[PeterG]

I feel so much better after reading all your posts and realizing I’m not alone.

My personal worst was when I was doing a water change and took out a couple gallons more water than I had made. I keep a number of 5 gallon jugs of RO/DI on hand as well as a number of small 1 gal vinegar containers filled with RO/DI.
You guessed it! I grabbed one gal. of RO/DI and a gal of vinegar. Mixed them with salt and added them to the tank. Wound up losing most of my corals and most of my fish.