JohnnyScholtz
New Member
Hi all!
I wanted to make a thread of costly beginner mistakes I made and Im sure many of you went through the same thing and maybe we can post rookie mistakes to help beginners avoid blowing tons of money right off the bat.
1. First thing I did was not listen to anyones advice about letting my tank cycle for the full 6-8 weeks before adding fish (lost 167.00 in fish)
2. Now grante we all dont just have tons of money to blow when starting a new hobby that were not fully sure if were even going to enjoy but I sure wish I got an RO/DI before anything else.
3. Being that I was new and was told to start with a FOWLR tank I purchased crappy cheapo led lights and did no research on the 10,000-14,000k range and ended up getting lights in the 6,000k range, Ill explain later why this was a big mistake.
4. Was told by many ppl to not get (trigger, puffers, lionfish and eels) but one of the first fish I got was a trigger. was told Ill get bored of it and want to move on to (snails, crabs, shrimp, and maybe corals some day.) I said "no way this trigger is bad ***, I dont care about shrimp and what not" well let me tell you, about 3-4 weeks that trigger wasnt so cool anymore and I sure wanted to add some cool lil inverts and what do you think happened?? yup trigger made them into a very high end expensive lunch. another 60.00 bucks to waist.
5. ok so now im going to talk about number 2 and 3. the mixture of tap water and 6,000k lights were causing GHA outbreaks like you would not believe, so much to the point I had to bi weekly pul out my LR and scrub them down in the tub. At the point of this doing some research learing that GHA is a constint battle I assumed that everyone does this.... its just part of the hobby, well let me tell you. I was about ready to give this hobby up, after talking to many ppl I learned that with the tap water and 6k lights plus all the waist from feeding and fish waist, this was gonna be a non stop battle. long story short I had to pretty much rip apart my whole tank to do a full clean house on the GHA once I changed over to RO/DI and had to go out and spend a pretty penny on 25000k lights, another mistake that cost me 493.00 bucks. plus the man hours of doing this and just over all stress.
6. was having troube with my PH and was told at my LFS to get CC and add it to my LS substrait to help with PH, well they failed to tell me to wash the CC off in a bucket and I clouded my tank for 3 days. once the dust settled it looked like i had a snow storm in my tank and there was nothing I could do to get rid of it. so take a guess what happened next?? I ended up taking all the water out of my tank and all my LR and having to mix and clean that CC and pump out the crap water. This job took me 3 full days, It was a nightmare. I dont even wanna see what my water bill is gonna be after running my RO/DI for well overe 48 hours.
7. Back to the GHA, started seeing 0 results talked more with my 2 family members that are seasoned reefers and was told to get rid of the crappy wet/dry and get a fuge and UV until to help in addition to the lights and RO/DI, once again another 450.00 bucks out of my pocket.
8. started to see redslim, but was a beginner and thought "oh look im getting coraline!!!!! awesome" went to my LFS and got some chem called reef builder or somthing like that and started dosing every 2 days, well that took over my tank and was actually redslime hhaha who woulda thought smh.
9. Finally the last and most recent mistake I made, when I put my tank back together and also in doing this I sold my predator fish and changed over to coral, I dident do my research once again and one fish I have left is a butterfly and I should have sold him while I had al my fish out in 5 gal buckets but I had no clue he was dangoures to corals. Now hes back in the tank and I cant get him out for the life of me. so again what do you think is next? looks like im taking apart my whole tank again.
Now heres the kicker, i got my tank Aug 6th of this year, everything I listed above happened in that short amount of time. not to mention all the man hours and trips to the LFS and lost fish, sold fish. so on and so forth... I just added up the cost of evertthing and just in mistakes im around 1,300 bucks. and everytime I look at my tank I see something I need to upgrade, maybe im just getting addicted to the hobby and making things worse in my mind then they really are, but for me I see all these amazing tanks and people are just runnning amazing water quality and I just want and need that, and wont stop until I get there lol.
So I would like to see what other mistakes people have made, Im sure theres tons out there...
I wanted to make a thread of costly beginner mistakes I made and Im sure many of you went through the same thing and maybe we can post rookie mistakes to help beginners avoid blowing tons of money right off the bat.
1. First thing I did was not listen to anyones advice about letting my tank cycle for the full 6-8 weeks before adding fish (lost 167.00 in fish)
2. Now grante we all dont just have tons of money to blow when starting a new hobby that were not fully sure if were even going to enjoy but I sure wish I got an RO/DI before anything else.
3. Being that I was new and was told to start with a FOWLR tank I purchased crappy cheapo led lights and did no research on the 10,000-14,000k range and ended up getting lights in the 6,000k range, Ill explain later why this was a big mistake.
4. Was told by many ppl to not get (trigger, puffers, lionfish and eels) but one of the first fish I got was a trigger. was told Ill get bored of it and want to move on to (snails, crabs, shrimp, and maybe corals some day.) I said "no way this trigger is bad ***, I dont care about shrimp and what not" well let me tell you, about 3-4 weeks that trigger wasnt so cool anymore and I sure wanted to add some cool lil inverts and what do you think happened?? yup trigger made them into a very high end expensive lunch. another 60.00 bucks to waist.
5. ok so now im going to talk about number 2 and 3. the mixture of tap water and 6,000k lights were causing GHA outbreaks like you would not believe, so much to the point I had to bi weekly pul out my LR and scrub them down in the tub. At the point of this doing some research learing that GHA is a constint battle I assumed that everyone does this.... its just part of the hobby, well let me tell you. I was about ready to give this hobby up, after talking to many ppl I learned that with the tap water and 6k lights plus all the waist from feeding and fish waist, this was gonna be a non stop battle. long story short I had to pretty much rip apart my whole tank to do a full clean house on the GHA once I changed over to RO/DI and had to go out and spend a pretty penny on 25000k lights, another mistake that cost me 493.00 bucks. plus the man hours of doing this and just over all stress.
6. was having troube with my PH and was told at my LFS to get CC and add it to my LS substrait to help with PH, well they failed to tell me to wash the CC off in a bucket and I clouded my tank for 3 days. once the dust settled it looked like i had a snow storm in my tank and there was nothing I could do to get rid of it. so take a guess what happened next?? I ended up taking all the water out of my tank and all my LR and having to mix and clean that CC and pump out the crap water. This job took me 3 full days, It was a nightmare. I dont even wanna see what my water bill is gonna be after running my RO/DI for well overe 48 hours.
7. Back to the GHA, started seeing 0 results talked more with my 2 family members that are seasoned reefers and was told to get rid of the crappy wet/dry and get a fuge and UV until to help in addition to the lights and RO/DI, once again another 450.00 bucks out of my pocket.
8. started to see redslim, but was a beginner and thought "oh look im getting coraline!!!!! awesome" went to my LFS and got some chem called reef builder or somthing like that and started dosing every 2 days, well that took over my tank and was actually redslime hhaha who woulda thought smh.
9. Finally the last and most recent mistake I made, when I put my tank back together and also in doing this I sold my predator fish and changed over to coral, I dident do my research once again and one fish I have left is a butterfly and I should have sold him while I had al my fish out in 5 gal buckets but I had no clue he was dangoures to corals. Now hes back in the tank and I cant get him out for the life of me. so again what do you think is next? looks like im taking apart my whole tank again.
Now heres the kicker, i got my tank Aug 6th of this year, everything I listed above happened in that short amount of time. not to mention all the man hours and trips to the LFS and lost fish, sold fish. so on and so forth... I just added up the cost of evertthing and just in mistakes im around 1,300 bucks. and everytime I look at my tank I see something I need to upgrade, maybe im just getting addicted to the hobby and making things worse in my mind then they really are, but for me I see all these amazing tanks and people are just runnning amazing water quality and I just want and need that, and wont stop until I get there lol.
So I would like to see what other mistakes people have made, Im sure theres tons out there...
