This is a fun thread! It's good to know you're in good company when you do dumb things
My contributions...
- Glued a frag, put it into the tank too soon, and watched in horror as my skunk cleaner shrimp wandered over to check it out... and promptly glued both front claws together. Poor thing couldn't pick up food (and therefore didn't eat) for a week!
- Bought a sand-sifting starfish, on LFS's advice, for my 14g nano (first tank). Best thing was, it was nearly dead when I bought it - poor thing died within days.
- Started with a nano, thinking I'd never want/need a larger tank. Went from a 14g to a 30g, and set up a 5.5g pico inside the stand. I then converted my 65g FW to FOWLR, then bought more lighting so it could become a reef, then upgraded to a 90g. My hubby tells me I'm done upgrading now.
- Bought a mated pair of saddleback clownfish and put them into my 65g with more peaceful fish. They matured, staked out a territory (the entire tank) and set about killing everything in their path. In the 48h it took me to buy and set up a new tank for them, they killed and maimed quite a few of their tankmates, despite all my efforts to stop them.
- Put a bunch of LPS frags into my fishless 5.5g pico. Seemed harmless, but even massive doses of CaCl, buffer and MgSO4 couldn't keep up with their needs. I had to remove water twice daily and replace it with one of the above, because the evaporation rate wasn't high enough for all the supplementation I was doing. Three minutes away from this tank and it would get off-balance. I let things go too long one week, and nearly lost everything. Only a 90% water change, followed by smartening up and shutting down the pico, saved the corals.
- Caught a large, destructive Xanthid crab that had been lurking in my 65g by ripping apart the rockwork and smashing the 10lb rock he'd made a home inside. Put said crab into a small DIY refugium hanging on the back of the tank, not realizing he'd figure out how to get out. He was back in the tank by morning. Took me months to catch the little bugger again. He lives in my 30g with the maroon clowns, a mantis, tulip anemones, pest algae, macroalgae, ugly zoanthids and a HOB filter. It's my little sanctuary for unwanted critters
- The latest dumb thing: bought 9 mollies hoping occasionally to collect fry, gut-load them with healthy algaes and feed them to the reef fish as a treat. I clearly underestimated their cuteness factor. My hubby is very attached to the parents and the first batch of fry, so we're raising them
Now I have 37 mollies in a 21g tank.