True Confessions of a Reef Aquarist

[kwaters]

Originally posted by Johnsteph10

Those little buggers have a pretty good set of teeth on them!!! My clowns love to nibble on me...I guess I am invading their space!

Kris

[dastratt]

Well this one's obvious, but I put my bare hands in my tank all the time, despite having a set of aquagloves right in my stand ... sometimes there are delicate tasks I can't do with them on, but other times its out of pure laziness

[Peter Eichler]

Originally posted by dastratt
Well this one's obvious, but I put my bare hands in my tank all the time, despite having a set of aquagloves right in my stand ... sometimes there are delicate tasks I can't do with them on, but other times its out of pure laziness

Meh, I don't see anything wrong with that.

[Peter Eichler]

Confess your reefing sins and be cleansed of your guilt!

[lpsluver]

More shocking stories...

As frequently happens catastrophies happen while you sleep. This is they way it happens for me. Fortunately I am a light sleeper. One time I installed a new UV on my 180 FO. It had a bad seal and leaked into the bulb area. I awoke to hear what I thought was a splashing sound and went to investigate. I opened the cabinet and smelled the burning plastic and saw a little red glow. Thankfully I did not put my hand into the couple or so gallons of water this was sitting in while I was messing around looking for the leak and before I disconnected it. Never did install a GFCI

Then there was the time I awoke to a crash then the sound of cascading water. It was the cheap a$$ overflow on my 60 hex. The weld failed and the back part fell to the floor. The siphon continued!! Spilling water onto the electronics and powerstrips that I conveniently had sitting right below it. At 2:00 in the AM all I could think to do was unplug the power from the wall. The whole time water continued to pour down on me (the pump was still running and emptying my sump). Needless to say I got the shock of my life. I pulled away, instinctively, but then went back in for more. Hey what do you want it was 2 in the morning, and my brain was still in bed. Needless to say I got shocked again. After pulling away again I went in for the third time and grinned and beared it, while screaming like Dustin Hoffman in the Running Man, and finally unplugged it. Then...I stopped the siphon by lifting up the U-tube out of the tank. (like I said it was 2 in the morning). Never put a GFCI on that one either.

[capn_hylinur]

I don't change the micron filter bag everyday--sometimes a week--but its a big sucker--and I'm not convinced it is returning nitrates to the water

I keep stalling changing my halides and attinics--its been a year now.

[Sheol]

I added 3 new coral colonies to my tank after my last move. I know, but they were too pretty to ignore..
Of course, my clownfish (False Perc) took violent exception to this & relocated my Platygyra about 9 seperate times, despite the coral being 5 times her size..

Matthew

[barbra]

Does anyone here have a tank that would pass an electrical inspection? I know I don't, and it seems I have plenty of company.

Nor do I check my water parameters. Why bother? They don't change. I got really tired of testing and recording the same figures over and over again.

[dpearly88]

Electrical lets not even talk about that!

I use tap water from an artesian well for the last 3 years... still going strong!

I do twenty precent water changes every month... or two.

I only test calcium and alkalinity. Alkalinity is pretty hard for me to control.

[capn_hylinur]

just curious what's the alkalinity fo the well water?

[Darth Wader]

I confessed a bunch of stuff then felt bad for being so lazy so I went and set up my lights. After feeling good like I'm not so lazy anymore, I turned on my RO unit to fill up a bucket of water, forgot about it, and went to bed. Left it running all night and flooded my laundry room again!! Sorry again to the dude who lives below me.

[Peter Eichler]

Well, I've kept having to throttle back my return to my 65 gallon over the last month. I pulled a hermit crab out of the return pipe and though that would do it, no luck... So after trying many things and still not getting the flow through the return that I should I just chalk it up to freakish backpressure and my poor plumbing...

My tank ended up overfowing a bit last week. Luckily I was around when it started happening. Turns out there was a snail shell in there in addition to the hermit crab. Guess who's finally going to get a strainer on his standpipe!

I knew I needed one, but noooooo, I have to learn things the hard way.

[happyface888]

Buying a crap load of cheap skimmers one after another and realizing they all suck and than buying a good skimmer... Being a cheapscape.

[SethSPST]

To bring an old thread back. I flooded my tank tuesday. We had a scheduled power outage, and I made sure the siphon stopped on my return line the night before, with about an inch (approx 2-3gallons of water) of room to the top of my sump. I woke up after the power outage and walked into the living room, immediately noticed the level in the tank was way to low. Crap. Open the stand doors and I can't see the level in the sump, because the water is to the top of it and has overflowed onto the floor, double crap, wife is going to be ****ed. Got my power strips wet (yep, they're still sitting on the bottom of my stand ) and no power to drain the sump. I had to hook a power converter to the car and hook it to the tank to drain the sump. Then I realized my problem, the major part of the siphon stopped, but the tank was still slowly draining. Got towels and dried the floor as best I could, and dried out my powerstrips again.

2 days later, I finally drilled a 5/64" hole in my return line to break the siphon. Went to test it, and as I unplugged the return pump from the power strip, it was sticking so I used my fingers to gradually pry it off, yep touched both prongs. But it's okay, I've shocked myself so much lately, I'm immune to 110.

[Paul B]

My electrical work also looks like a mess but I have been an electrician for almost 40 years.
There are wires hanging out of my MH fixtures and I don't know how old my test kits are but they came in wooden boxes.
My actinic lamps burned out a few months ago and my MH bulbs are a few years old.
The last time I changed water I took it from the sea when it was about 90 deegrees out. I guess that was in July.
For some reason my tank looks great with absolutely no algae and almost everything is spawning. I hate to ruin it and do what I am supposed to do.

[SethSPST]

How did you get my picture Paul!!

[Paul B]

Actually that guy is a woos. They are goldfish. I only stand in saltwater when I do electrical work, and only in NSW

[Chrismo]

It's been 9 months since I've done a waterchange.
I've got a lot of frags which I have not mounted properly so they fall over constantly and I put them back, only to have them fall again and eventually disappear.
A little superglue would solve the problem but it just doesnt happen.

I'm sick of coral pruning - so I usually just let the corals fight it out.

[kenny77]

Originally posted by Chrismo
It's been 9 months since I've done a waterchange.
I've got a lot of frags which I have not mounted properly so they fall over constantly and I put them back, only to have them fall again and eventually disappear.
A little superglue would solve the problem but it just doesnt happen.

I'm sick of coral pruning - so I usually just let the corals fight it out.

yep smae her. what can cost $3-4? I have about 5 coral that every one day I find them in the sand. why rocks won't fit like legos. that will be way easier.

[capn_hylinur]

Here's the mother of all clarkie curses

For six months I have been trying to get this 5 inch clarkie out of my tank--it bites, it kicks sand in everyones face---it bulls over 1/2 lbs rocks and corals etc.
finally two guys, two nets, two hours we catch the sucker.

I don't want to flush it--even being the brute it is--qt tank has about six new arrivals--so I dump it in the sump---I was going to give it to a LFS store the next day.

For some reason --that didn't happen right away--each morning I would put a little food in the sump--and receive the Monty Pyton gladiator greeting from it.
Then one morning--went to feed--instant darkeness in the whole house.
One by one I reset ground faults, circuit breakers etc and everything is restored. Still don't understand. then I look in the sump---there is a nice orange arcing coming from the heater. Closer look and I find that Clarkie has broken the glass outside of the heater by banging it into some live rock.
Of course the clarkie isn't affected at all-----
I'm thankful for reef central advise on ground fault protectors and in sump ground probes--probably saved this reefers life also.

[capn_hylinur]

Originally posted by Chrismo
It's been 9 months since I've done a waterchange.
I've got a lot of frags which I have not mounted properly so they fall over constantly and I put them back, only to have them fall again and eventually disappear.
A little superglue would solve the problem but it just doesnt happen.

I'm sick of coral pruning - so I usually just let the corals fight it out.

Chrismo----greetings from Hamilton---nice to run into you again especially on reef central instead of RE.
Capn--aka Scott
Have you checked out Where's the reef yet?

[ACBlinky]

I have a shoulder injury, and rather than asking others for help I've just been putting off water changes and other tank maintenance. It's been two months since the last water change (but to be fair, that one was a biggie - we moved house and had to replace more than 50% of the water in each tank).

I don't test as often as I should - I drip about 1g of kalk (1tsp:1g) into the 90g each day, add Mg occasionally, and everything looks happy, but I haven't actually measured Ca or alk in about a month.

I overfeed. My fish are fat - HUGE in fact. I like seeing my angel and tang nearly as chubby as wild fish, and I can't stand seeing them picking at little bits of detritus on the rockwork, looking for sustinence. They get a variety of foods, and they're fed until they lose interest some days. There's always nori on a clip if they want to graze. The huge ball of chaeto in the sump keeps NO3 and PO4 at zero, so I don't worry too much.

[Paul B]

I sometimes use bleach to treat NSW, a few months ago I bought two fish, a firefish and some type of gobi (I forgot what type)
anyway, to acclimate them I put them in a one gallon container which I gradually add tank water to. In five minutes I went to put some tank water in and they were both dead.
It was the container that I used the day before to put Clorox in and there was still some bleach in it, I thought it was water.
But the fish were squeeky clean.

[reefergeorge]

Originally posted by Der_Iron_Chef
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who overflows the RO/DI container. I've started to set the alarm on my cell phone now, to remind me to go check it
.

This makes me feel a lot better. I have flooded my living room four times, laundry room who knows fifteen times, but the kitchen was the best when I plugged the sink to fill with tap to flush the saltwater down, and them got on RC and forgot about the sink. I now set my kitchen timer every time I fill my rodi containers.

[m2434]

Originally posted by reefergeorge
This makes me feel a lot better. I have flooded my living room four times, laundry room who knows fifteen times, but the kitchen was the best when I plugged the sink to fill with tap to flush the saltwater down, and them got on RC and forgot about the sink. I now set my kitchen timer every time I fill my rodi containers.

Only 15 times or so - your good! In grad school I was in a shared house and had a 55g on the second floor. The bathroom on the second floor was directly over the bathroom on the first floor and the first floor bathroom had one of those bowl style light fixtures... Yeah, while studying for an exam once, my roommate interrupted me to ask why the light fixture was full of water. Needless to say I finally invested in an extension hose, so I could make RO/DI water in the bathtub.