Stupidist things you've done as a reefer, I'll start

[down and outman]

I leave my buddy a 5 gal container of top off water. I also do wc for him. A few weeks later, I'm concerned that his Nitrates and salinity are climbing. After changing the water I grab his top off water to top his tank off. It looks funny, tastes nasty. He dumped the top off water and was using old WC water to top it off! I got a new jug of Top Off water and used a marker to write TOP OFF WATER on it. Tank is getting back to normal.

[uncleant]

i bought a current fission recircleation skimmer made to handle 225 gal. i have a 125 display with a 70 gal sump...... turns out the dam thing doesnt fit under my stand

[sundancer]

Bought a $1000 tank on Ebay 3000 miles away. paid $600 for shipping. Tank was "lost" in transit for two months. When it finally arrived it turned out to be a piece of junk. Deep fractures and cratches everyhere. I still have it sitting in my garage because no one wants it. I am thinking of using for SW storage.

[Treef]

Bought a packet of frozen mysis shrimp after school and forgot it in my bag for 2 days. I will never forget that smell....

[Rustylugnuts]

I could have had a Gibson Les Paul for what I've spent on this hobby!

Couple more months and you'll have a '56 tweed twin to play it on!

[ACBlinky]

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.

[techreef]

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

[cardgenius]

One night I decided I was gonna stay up late and make water. Next thing I know its 8am and my kitchen and basement have about 75 gallons of RO water soaked into the floors.

[down and outman]

Originally posted by Rustylugnuts
Couple more months and you'll have a '56 tweed twin to play it on!

Drool!

[scapes]

this thread is funny....

stupidest thing I"ve done--

I'm a little on the impatient side. Been in the hobby for two years now. When I first started, I wanted to glue some little corals onto some rocks. Someone told me to use the super glue gel stuff.
So, I went out and bought some. I can't really say in the 32 years of my life I have really used the stuff. The glue had been used prior and so the end of the tube was glued shut you know. Being impatient (or maybe lazy) that I can be, instead of cutting it w/ scissors I used my TEETH!! yeppers. I tore and tore until finally I got it to come out-IN MY MOUTH. I thought "OMG-I'm gonna die, literally". It went to the back of my throat, I could feel it. My two kids are running around the house and my throat is literally glued shut!! I got my throat open and breathed a big SIGH. "OK, i'm alive" I thought. But now I had the nastiest taste and the glue had stuck to the back of my tongue.
I had these big swells of glue all over my tongue, got in my teeth, and on the roof of my mouth. I spent a good full day scrubbing my mouth w/ anything I could jam into my mouth trying to get the s### out. When my husband came home he asked me what I was doing, I said "I have food caught in my teeth". He gets ticked every time I would electrocute myself, so I knew this would be the ultimate icing on the cake. I could never tell him and still haven't. He would think I was soooo dumb. Yes, I know, it was.

The worst thing that came out of this was that I lost all taste of everything for about a week-glue covered my taste buds.

The best thing that came out of this was that I didn't kill myself in front of my two kids!!

I read all the threads about the fish eating the glue and their mouths being glued shut---it can happen to YOU TOO!! so don't make the same DUMB mistake I did

ugh

[McTeague]

...and my throat is literally glued shut!! I got my throat open and breathed a big SIGH.

Wow! You win the thread for sure... Glad you survived!

[HPD Turbo]

Yeah, you have my vote to

[ACBlinky]

Wow, gluing your mouth/throat is definitely up there with some of the silliest things in this thread

I forgot one thing on my list - this is probably the dumbest/most dangerous hobby-related thing I've ever done, but at least it was out of ignorance and I didn't get hurt.

The LFS where I used to work was managed by two macho idiots. They liked to dare people to lick EM tablets (makes you lose your sense of taste apparently), would pay employees $1 to grab a baby electric catfish with a bare hand, and they loved ordering in poisonous or otherwise dangerous and predatory fish. We did have one wall of tanks that typically housed the reef-safe fish, to make selection easier for customers, but sometimes other fish were put there due to lack of space elsewhere.

One day, a customer came in and saw a group of marine catfish swimming together, and couldn't resist their cute little faces. He decided to buy the lot. I went to get a net, and assuming these weren't dangerous fish, I caught them in the way I'd been taught - catch the fish in the net, and then while the net is still under water, remove the fish from the net with a bare hand and place it into the bag (we did this to save fish struggling and getting caught in the net and it works very well with most fish).

Little did I know, as I caught, handled and bagged 8 marine catfish, that these are poisonous fish! From wetwebmedia: "Plotosus lineatus (Thunberg 1787), the Striped Eel Catfish. Indo-Pacific; Red Sea to Micronesia. Only tropical reef catfish species. To a foot in length. Dangerously venomous. Keep hands clear when netting, moving."

None of the staff had been told these adorable little fish were VERY dangerous, and the managers thought it was funny when I addressed it - ask me why I quit

[t11t5]

I have a 1/4" stainless steel rod with a slot milled in the end. I put a razor blade in the slot to clean the glass.
One day I was cleaning the glass and set the rod with blade on top of my tank. It rolled off and went straight down into my foot. I got 8 stitches and a tetnis shot. That free SS rod and razor blade cost me alot of money.

[lark]

Not nearly as good as some of you, but . . .

Set a 7 gallon jug of top off water on top of my tank and opened the tap, only to forget about it. Only needed about 2 gallons to top off.

Decided to switch out an icecap timer and replace it. Used the same wires, and screwed them into the terminals under the plastic protective cover. Never unplugged the plug. (Didn't notice until I was done -- just got lucky.)

Aquascaped with live rock moving the rock all over the inside of the tank as I tried to get it just right. Forgot that it was an acrylic tank.

Used a slip bulkhead on the bottom of the tank, and cemented an adapter right below it. Couldn't get the bulkhead nut past the fitting and no space to saw or cut it. Had to use a dremel and ended up cutting into the bottom of the tank.

Not wearing gloves. This is one I continue to do.

[pledosophy]

For all you RODi flood makers. I have a solution.

My place has two full bathrooms. Convinced the wife to make one for the cat. The guest bathroom. We don't entertain.

Then hooked up my RO to the bathroom sink and ran the lines into the tub. If I overflow my top off container, it just goes down the drain. Otherwise I would have my own flood stories. I overflow that thing at least once a week.

HTH

Glad to see this thread back up. Fun Stuff.

[stuccodude]

filled tank with tap water and put 300$ worth of fish the next day. thank you LFS

[kenwendyb]

Stayed through two hurricanes for the sake of the tanks. Hundreds of dollars in gas for generators. Wait that wasn't stupid that was just plain crazy!!!!

[zhenjw]

Was messing around with my return pump when the tubing came off and water began to geyser out onto my face, the carpet, and the fuge light fixture. Decided it would be a good idea to hurry up and try to turn off the light fixture.

[yellowwatchmen]

The first piece of rock I ever bought was covered with aiptasia about 100 it was a 10lb rock. I thought they were feather dusters.
I was screwing around with my return and it is not cemented over the sump and the pvc came apart and I had about 5gal of water on the floor.

[mcneilwh]

Upgraded the pump size used to stir the limewater top off. When I woke up in the morning I said, “hmmm the tank looks a little cloudy”. Came damn near close to crashing my tank, thank goodness for my Neptune controller that stopped the addition at pH 8.8 before it was too late. Went to standing Limewater.

Started using one of those filter-socks. After about 5 days I noticed the sock was plugging up and was about 3/4 of the way full. I told myself I'll change it in the morning. Overnight the sock collapsed spilling water outside the sump. The top-off system kept adding more water. I woke up in the morning with a wet floor and an empty 7 gallon top off bucket, and low SG. The sock is gone now, Chateo is my filter.

I placed a valve in the overflow box return pipe in the sump to keep a little water in the pipe for noise reduction. Closed the valve a little too much and went to bed. In the morning ended up with another empty 7 gallon top off bucket. After that I added a T and an upside down J tube to overflow back into the sump in case it got plugged again.

Cleaned up my 1500 Seio pump really well, and placed in back in the tank. When the wave controller kicked it back on the elbow popped off creating a mini fountain. Lucky for me I was in the other room before if was too late.

Bought a really cool large black brittle star. After two weeks I had no more fish.

Telling my daughter the skimmer output is fish poop. She won’t help me clean it anymore.

Telling my sister in-law to how much the MH light fixture costs………My wife became concerned.

[steelpat]

Obtained some chaeto from a fellow hobbyist. Didn't quarantine. Now I have a nice aiptasia and flatworm collection. Anyone want some?

Tried Flatworm Exit twice - lost two SPS each time and really seemed to affect the corals. The second time, my Foxface seemed to get lateral line disease within hours of the treatment (he's OK now, after 4 months, almost no sign of the problem). Joe's Juice and injecting lemon juice seems to kill aiptasia, but it is only temporary.

Started the hobby with Xenia to make sure stuff will live in my tank (newbie lack of confidence). I can't get rid of it for anything and it grows like a plague, even from tiny pieces of residue on the rocks. I also have about 2 square feet of Green star polyps taking over my rocks. I hate soft corals.

Spotted hawkfish. Terror. Caused a fairly large clown to jump tank. Get peaceful fish - don't just buy fish that look cool and "might" be OK.

I actually still have a ton of SPS growing and lots of happy fish, but the tank is a mess. I guess I should be happy I can grow all the stuff, even the undesirable stuff.

I guess its time to start over, now that I learned the hard way to quarantine and/or dip everything and not to put anything in the tank that has the chance to kill or overtake things, and can move or hide.

[steelpat]

Oh...and I will trade for the '56 Tweed Twin. Take the tank, fish and corals and just leave the amp.