What's your worst fish MISTAKE?! Here's ours.

[randyBRS]

Some of us (many of us) learn from trial by fire, especially when it comes to choosing fish for our tanks.

I can't tell you how many fish I just had to have and nothing was going to stop me. It didn't always work out well to say the least.

So with that, here's some of our Top Fish Mistakes we've made and don't plan to make again in the future!

 

[Flippers4pups]

Bump

 

[Indytraveler83]

Great video guys, and I wanted to mention point #4.

You talk about color planning and how we do this with corals. I think many of us also forget to incorporate our lighting into our color planning for fish. A lot of us tend to run heavy blue lights, and some fish just don't look good under that lighting (such as purples and deep blues).

I had to adjust what I planned and get fish with a lot more white, yellow, orange and pink for them to really stand out under my lighting.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Mine was going for color.
Strike one: Damsels

Strike two : Sohol Tang

Strike three: Passer angel that ate at least $600 of coral in 3-4 days !!

 

[Jeff Cahill]

Mine was a gold head filabrata eel it eat everything including a lionfish and a 6 in tuskfish

 

[mcshams]

I really feel like we studied plenty to determine what fish would 'fit' our tank, what fish would interact with each other well, and not affect our coral, HOWEVER...

Mine was not quarantining as we were getting lucky with the first group of fish we put in. On the 13th fish...we had bacterial infection within 24 hours, killing all but 4 fish.

Needless to say, we QT everything now.

 

[attilak]

My biggest mistake was getting too many fish at once for one. The second mistake was just adding fish to my display tank not quarantining! I don't care what anyone says - I put all my fish through a 6 week QT. I had learned the hard way and worth investing in the additional time to make sure you put a healthy fish in a display tank.

 

[RobMcC]

Buying a ribbon eel, then another. Just could not get them to eat. I have now had a pair of golden dwarf morays for about 2 years to satisfy my eel fix!

 

[adromero]

I had a tank with soft corals, red sea grapes and three great looking seahorses. Spent time researching what I can and can’t add to the tank, found the proper lighting and flow, and populated the system with copepods. At year four, I added a chalk bass because a local LFS said it would fine even though I believed the fish would be too aggressive. All three seahorses died in a week. I should have followed what I believed was right rather than what I wanted to be true.

 

[Mark Bradley]

Really good video. Can’t say I haven’t made some of these mistakes in the past but this time round was able to tick most off - I spent several months planning the equipment and livestock.
I didn’t think of the ‘red light’ method to catch fish so that’s good to know - not needed to catch any so far thankfully.
The big one for me was quarantine - I can’t say I’ve come across any LFS that quarantines. I think the major wholesaler, in the UK, seems to be given that responsibility - I know quarantining doesn’t happen locally because I’ve seen them take the bags straight out the box and place in the shop tanks. In fairness I’ve bought blennies, a yellow tang, cardinal fish, firefish and damsels without any issues to date (their addition took place over Nov/Dec 2019). I liked your comment about having a fish you can move on when it’s right - I have had a few comments about my yellow tang but do appreciate it will get too big for me so tend to ignore.

 

[spfahnestock]

I think the best point of this video is when they talked about upgrading tanks in the future. "You are not married to your current tank". I am am one of those people that have tang in my 60 gallon cube. However, I know within a year or so I will upgrade or they will be re-homed to my friends 500 gallon. I think we are often quick to chastise someone for getting a fish based on their current tank without knowing the size of the fish or if they have plans in the near future to upgrade.

I look at it this way I will enjoy him as long as i can without hurting him the rehome or upgrade to suit.

 

[WiscoFishNut]

I've only been in SW hobby for about a year, so I haven't had a lot of time to make too many mistakes yet lol. First one was not QT'ing the fish in my first build, that ended poorly due to some unforeseen events. Second was adding a purple dottyback without researching; was a case of "ooh, that purple fish looks cool at the LFS".. Third was ignoring my wife's resistance to adding a sally lightfoot and emerald crab to the DT.. The six line wrasse may become #4 some day

 

[Little_Red_Ryan_Hood]

I think the biggest mistake most reefers make, as it pertains to fish, is not quarantining. Indeed, I have made this mistake as well.

This is one area our community needs to improve. BRS and quarantine experts need to develop an agreed upon qt method/methods that includes recommended products and procedures. I know there is some info here on R2R, but there seems to be contradictory information. I constantly here about how everyone should quarantine their fish, but they never direct anyone to the proper way to accomplish a qt procedure. That is even the case in this video. I consider myself an experienced reefer with about 15 years under my belt. I keep an acropora dominant system and I don't even feel confident with fish quarantine. If I don't have a solid understanding of quarantine methods, I would bet most people don't either. That is a shame because quarantining fish should be one of the first things mastered by any new reefer.

There is confusion with the proper copper to use, the levels needed to achieve the goal, and how long to keep fish at that level. In addition, exactly what other products should we use to eliminate other pests, like Prozipro?

A complete step by step guide for quarantining fish would be the most important and valuable piece of information for our hobby and the fish we keep. Why has this information taken so long to develop?

If you doubt my skepticism about quarantine confusion, just Google it and view a few different threads. They all offer different advise, products, levels, and time periods. Who is right? Who should I trust?

Sorry about the rant. I try to be positive most of the time. How many others would quarantine if there was a trusted source that provided a step by step guide?

 

[mkwarner77]

thinking I could put a small scopa tang in my 46 gl tank.......4 times. and not researching a certain fish I knew nothing about before I bought it, and it vanished.

 

[ase0227]

Neon dottyback. This was my big mistake. After adding this fish I was never able to add another fish to my tank, if I tried he would chase the new addition and attack them relentlessly no matter the type or the size.