Facepalm Moments...

ArowanaLover1902 · Oct 1, 2018

So just now realized I haven't changed out my filter sock in almost 6 months...I've cleaned it once or twice and thought "huh...this is dirty, should buy a new one ASAP" but for some reason never have. I was just looking around on here and saw something about filter socks and thought "Danggggg I really need a new one." I didn't have any real problems, but its in a bad state. Any similar moments?

P.S. I've just purchased 4 new ones and am not washing the old one, I'm throwing it out

TUSI · Oct 1, 2018

ArowanaLover1902 said:
So just now realized I haven't changed out my filter sock in almost 6 months...I've cleaned it once or twice and thought "huh...this is dirty, should buy a new one ASAP" but for some reason never have. I was just looking around on here and saw something about filter socks and thought "Danggggg I really need a new one." I didn't have any real problems, but its in a bad state. Any similar moments?

P.S. I've just purchased 4 new ones and am not washing the old one, I'm throwing it out

I clean mine every 4 days. If you did not clean it then it had to be overflowing, which means its useless. If you clean it at least once a week it will be more affective

saltyfilmfolks · Oct 1, 2018

Did you notice any real difference? Was the reef was better or worse?

I’d wager not.

Brett newell · Oct 1, 2018

I used to change them out every 5 to 7 days. Just before over flowing, always had 3 on rotation. One in tank wash 2 repeat. I stopped using socks about 6 months ago and noticed an increase in sps color and growth. I now run a sock once a month for 12 to 14 hours for large particles.

ArowanaLover1902 · Oct 1, 2018

I guess I never noticed a difference but to be fair this is the first tank I've run filter socks on. I've had problems with getting detectable nitrates/phosphates so I really don't know how much it did. It's been bubbling over, but it seems to function more like a skimmer (which I hate, microbubbles aplenty). There's a lot of gunk down there though.

User1 · Oct 1, 2018

Yup - got you covered. Setting up canopy, lights, on a tank upgrade. Asked my daughter for some help who said yes but needed a minute to finish something. I'm thinking sure, yeah - I got this and proceeded to maneuver the lighting and attach to points on canopy. One thing lead to another and has I went to clip the light to point it slipped. My daughter just walked into the room and gasped while I'm looking in shock as the light slowly falls to the bottom of the tank gently disturbing the fresh sand 30" below.

The good news is that nothing was powered up. I said some choice words. My daughter stern look at me with a "I told you so" bubble sign over her head. She just says here dad, let me help you get that out and we'll rinse it off with RI/RO water. Sure enough the calmer one prevails while I just take a sit and replay over and over what I just did that could have been prevented.

ArowanaLover1902 · Oct 1, 2018

Oh no, what type of lighting was it? Were you able to get it back online? Thats the type of story I'm looking for, I sympathize

User1 · Oct 1, 2018

ArowanaLover1902 said:
Oh no, what type of lighting was it? Were you able to get it back online? Thats the type of story I'm looking for, I sympathize

DIY multi channel LED's. Each of the chips is on its own heat sink which is about 6" x 4" spread with fan, chip, and light defuse / lens. She fished it out and asked me to get a bucket of RI/RO and proceeded rinse it. This was back in April and it is working great to this date. No corrosion which I am surprised I must admit. But yes - everything turned out well except for my ego which was directly related to what we all say this hobby needs more of (not cow bell...). And that is patience

Ori · Oct 1, 2018

My tank has been set up for 4 months now, and I guess I assumed I didn’t need to clean the return pump? Noticed that the flow in my tank was almost nonexistent, and It occured to me that I should probably clean it out. Good thing I did, it was so gross. Full of brown sludge ;Yuck.

Katrina71 · Oct 2, 2018

Uh...the return pump. Hmmm. I totally forgot...glad you said that.

ArowanaLover1902 · Oct 2, 2018

I looked down at the return pump once and found it was almost choked with chaeto that had somehow strayed all the way over there. It was growing all through the pump, the motor was running full time, but it just wasn't drawing much water.

boxed_reef · Oct 2, 2018

Had one of those moments just last night. I was siphoning some hair algae into a filter sock in the sump. The last bit of algae was near the return nozzle, so I decided to turned off the return pump so the algae wouldn’t blow all over... Sump overflowed into ATO chamber. Luckily I noticed my mistake when the sump was about 1/2” from completely overflowing.

Garia666 · Oct 2, 2018

Sigh, my story is the following.
I recently had the opportunity to go bigger.
All goes well. transition of the corals of my old tank goes smoothly. I’m at the point to start stocking. Since I still have a limmited amount of space I want to only stock with things I really like. So last weekend I bought this stunning beauty.

I spend 3 days to carefully let it attach to an rock. After that I thought it was time to place it. The whole evening I spend monitoring and all looked fine. The next morning Before I go to work, I always quickly check my tank.

Seeing the horror of my lobo slowly eating it away. The whole day I felt bad, what if I had done things differently. Sadly the photo doesn’t do it justice. But it’s the only thing left.

This is a hard lesson for me, I hope I can spare someone else doing the same.