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

[kidchill]

Okay, so I found the journal that I had started when I first setup my 75 gallon tank. The biggest mistake, not allowing the LR to cure and overloading the tank with inhabitants before it fully cycled. I was retarded in that respect!!! I had ich for literally 4-6 months and couldn't understand why.....If only I had known that the pretty tangs I had were super susceptible and my water quality SUCKED!!! I now know better, but it would've saved me a butt-load of money if I knew that before. This may not seem like a big deal, but if there's anyone new in the hobby, learn from this....DON'T STOCK THE TANK UNTIL IT'S READY, NO MATTER HOW PRETTY THE FISH!!!!

2nd mistake.....going on vacation. And, although this isn't really a mistake, anyone will tell you that the stuff hits the fan as soon as you go away!! I was only gone for like 36 hours, but in the mean time it was WWIII in the tank. I cam home to find the heater had exploded, the water temp was like 72 (if not less), the fish were lethargic, all the snails/crabs were dead, the cleaner shrimp was MIA, the coral banded shrimp had his large claws ripped off and were laying on either side of the tank, the serpeant star had chunks missing from his body, and apparently the lights malfunctioned and the actinics stayed on the entire time, so I couldn't see anything due to algae growth.....The moral of this story.....DON'T GO ON VACATION!!!

[mwitten]

Ooo.. I have to weigh in on this one. In no particular order.

-Got clever and used wireless switch to run a pump to pump new SW from bucket in basement to my system. While out of town, power glitched and the wireless switch came up in the "On" mode. Emptied bucket, heater melted through pump, breakers blew (fortunately).

-For reasons I don't remember, had outflow of cannister filter empty to sump, inflow from main tank. Fine until the first time I shut off the main sump return pump to feed and left the room to get the food. Major flood.

-Thought those plastic things LFS's hang on the tank to put fish in when you buy them would be a good thing to hold my Neptune ACPro on my sump. Skimmer adjustment caused water to run slowly down the edge of the sump, right into that plastic thing. Aquacontroller was floating somewhat. Curt did what he could for it, but it was a gonner within a few months. Oh, and there was a flood associated with this one as well.

-Set salt scoop caked with salt on my computer and forgot about it for about a week. Salt hydrolyzed and the salt slurry flowed down to the motherboard.

-Also computer related, while pulling a vacuum cleaning siphon (hard plastic kind) out of my tank, managed to sling about a cup of saltwater to the keyboard of my computer about 5 feet away. Dead hit on it.

-Assumed both 55's I had were the same, since they looked pretty much the same, and tried to drill the second one the way I had the first. Fortunately I had safety glasses on when the entire side vaporized.

-Was messing with my baking soda water dosing pump that was sticking, and set it to run on manual override for a few minutes to get alk back up. Call came saying my big order of new corals was in at my mailbox location, and went over to get them. Mid afternoon I remembered the dosing pump was on (4 hrs or more). While debating how bad this might be, kalk doser kicked in. Water was consistency of skim milk (2 inch visibility max). Killed all small organisms and inverts, crashed system, then lost the entire order of coral. At least the fish survived.

These are only the ones I have not been able to blank out of my memory.

Oh, and Dremmel folks: I switched to the battery operated one.... I won't explain why.

-Mike

[AMIFL]

Other than being electricuted multiple times, when I was first starting years ago, my buddy borrowed my water change bucket without asking and used it to mop the floor. My next water change was the killer. He had used bleach in the bucket and I lost just about everything in the tank. That son of a b*****

[cwilson]

my biggest mistake...

GETTING INTO THIS HOBBY!

i think it would have been cheaper and less addicting to take up cocaine instead

[dkuster]

Back in the late 80's when I got into this hobby I had a 50 gallon
reef tank with various LPS.

One day I thought my salinity was a little low, but being in a lazy
mood I figured it would be OK to add some salt mix directly to the
tank -- as long as I didn't dump it directly on a coral.

But then I forgot to turn off the pump and powerheads, so several
LPS got "snowed on". I ran for the turkey baster but it was too
late. The next morning several corals had patches of bare
skeleton showing.

Moral: "If you don't have time to do it right, then don't do it
at all."

[dogstar74]

I spent all day working on a great idea for a skimmer, installed it that evening, and went to be tired of a good day's work. About 3 in the AM, I hear a huge THUD! I ran into the living room, and my floor speaker had toppled over. That's strange I thought. Till I noticed that the cardboard box I had it sitting on had collapsed from being soaked from the bottom up! My new skimmer was vomiting very wet skimmate foam into the collection cup, which I was so smart in draining into a 1/2 gallon collection bottle. Which was outside my sump and overflowing like crazy onto the carpet! I estimate 5 gallons.

Moral: There isn't any set it and forget it in this hobby.

[Æonic]

Maybe not the stupidest, but one of them.

When mounting a frag to the live rock, I regularly use a paper towel to clean off the end of a tube of super glue. After I'm done, I often forget and use the same paper towel to dry my hands >_<

[IndigoSea]

My skin is still crawling at sucking a bristleworm (shudder)
I've done a lot of stupid things, the saddest of which was filling the tank too high and losing a little cherub angel
I will never forgive myself. NIGHTMARES.

[MikePowell]

ummmm. probibly taking my wife to the lfs and having her find out how much this hobby really costs. i was getting by so well with i bought it used, or i traded my old pump for it, or how did that get there? i didn't buy it.

[rustybucket145]

Storing freeze dried Cyclops in an unmarked clear bottle.... Girlfriend mistaking them for Bacon Bits..... "...Honey, that salad sure was good.... what are my Clyclops doing sitting out on the counter...???"

DOH!!!

[jcpatella]

I'm still very new to saltwater, so I can't claim that this was done back when I was an idiot..... My wife and I decided to start a saltwater tank, so I made my way out front, pulled the hose through the front door, and FILLED 'ER UP! I then added salt, live rock, and sand, and created the most beautiful diatom aquarium you've ever seen.

Let me know if anyone needs any algae frags.

[Warif]

I bought my collection of Tangs over a period of approximately a month.

[Reefer Steve]

At work talking to a customer dipping my finger in the tank an WHAM the 18 inch stars and stripes puffer tasted my pinky...
Ouch!

Another time doing the same think got nailed by a fox face.
Not as bad.

[down and outman]

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

[HPD Turbo]

I food poison my daughter with a milkshake of IO salt on the blender.
I have electrocuted my self like 100 times, ruin my wood floor, carpet, wall, etc.
I belive that I am learning now

[flyyyguy]

Ive done more than a few since this...but this is the funniest....kinda


The first featherduster i ever got was a yellow crowned specimen from marine depot. When it arrived the yellow crown was detached in the bag and the 1/2" long worm was outside of his 8" tube. I did a little research and learned that not only is it not unusual for them to lose their crown in shipping, but that if seperated from their tube they can do fine if you p[ut them in a calm spot in the sand away from predators...they will grow a new tube. So i did this and after a week, the featherduster was just sitting and wriggling in the same place so i thought i would maybe help him by putting him inside his old tube...which was in the tank as well. So i cut an opening in the front of the tube to put him inside and in the process, cut the head OFF of the very much alive ADULT featherduster, who of course was 5 or 6 inches long. Nobody survived that one but myself. Somebody finally ended up eating the baby

[flyyyguy]

Originally posted by HPD Turbo
I food poison my daughter with a milkshake of IO salt on the blender.

Man, my wife would SO kick my arse if that were to happen. She is ALWAYS getting on me from leaving stuff where the kid can get to it and using certain utensils

[pledosophy]

bump

[ganjero]

Buy odyssea crap

[heyfredyourhat]

I am still very new and am getting into the figuring out what it means to own a SW tank thing but I have had a few bad times.

Saturday morning go into common room/laundry in the basement (we have basement suite with good renters) turn 90GPD RO/DI on, which pours into 121 litre pail, Saturday afternoon play with tank, Sunday watch football. Go to work monday, come home monday at lunch, go to leave monday at lunch and wife says why is the floor wet....uuugghh . Heart kind of sank there....Oh well think of it as a carpet cleaning service! I don't know how many gallons spilled but it was a lot and it went everywhere. Didn't help matters that it had flooded the persons bedroom, laundry room, and closet/coat room.

Then about a week after that upstairs working on the skimmer and the sump make a skimmer tweak, then get back to football, then make lunch, then look at hardwood floor and say oh crap again! Overflowed skimmer, maybe 5 gallons. Most of it went behind the tank into no mans land and then eventually found its way into the basement living room and ruined some ceiling tiles and made there floor wet AGAIN....

I have made a few plumbing mistakes which I am still trying to sort out, but other than that so far so good

[sk8rreefgeek]

Originally posted by Zucker26
Bought a NanoCube because my girlfriend wanted a "Nemo." I could actually consider myself financially stable if that event had never occurred 4 years ago.

haha. I bought my girlfriend a 24g nano this christmas

One time I rinsed off the bio-rock stuff in my filter. won't do that again

[McTeague]

Dumped the gravel in and then looked over and saw the undergravel filter plates sitting on the floor. They are supposed to go in BEFORE the gravel!

Put a cleaner shrimp in with a trigger

Bought a large yellow tang for my 40 gallon tank and had to give him back to the pet store when I realized my tank was WAY too small for him and took a $30 net loss.

[llorence]

It's not really that stupd, other than the fact that I've done it several times now. After emptying my fresh water storage container into several 5-gal jugs, I forgot to close the spigot before turning on my RO/DI unit that empties into this storage container. Then several hours later (one time the next day), I discover that all of my new RO/DI water (gallons and gallons) has just been emptying onto the floor. Again, stupid mainly because I've done it several times.

Somebody remind me . . . why are we telling on ourselves????

[tedmc2]

Got home from work on a Friday, started filling a 5 gal bucket with RO/DI for topoff and popped a beer.

Saturday morning my upstaris neighbor was banging on my back door saying the basement was flooded.

I remembered the bucket and found my living room under 2 inches of water with water seeping through the hardwood floor into the basement.

I've since bought a $2 cooking timer.

[rbursek]

filling my 120 with some of the highest calcium filled well water to scrub the glass with a scotch brite pad to get it off and see all the scrathes in the glass when the MH are on.
Not leaving notes all around that I am making water and to flood out the basement rec room carpeting, just woke up this morning a 2 am for a bathroom call to go running downstairs and find it 1/2 inch from the top of the Brute. Bob