Funny Newbie Mistakes?

[KenRexford]

At a lfs, they had a number of flame shrimp marked as peppermint shrimp at, like, 8 bucks each. I asked for the manager to try to save him some embarrassment. After several attempts to convince him went unsuccessful, I acquired 8 of the flame shrimps for my 125 tank.

So far, so good. Stupid lfs would not listen, and so I had about $300 worth of shrimp. One heck of a cuc, eh?

Well, a stupid lfs can work both ways, as I had earlier bought what was now a fairly large and beautiful lunare wrasse, because the same lfs said they were invertebrate safe.

So, in the end, my lunare wrasse got a $300 meal for only $64! Pretty good discount, eh?

 

[Skynyrd Fish]

Kind of like the guy who sold me my melanarus wrase and a bag of snails. After 27 years in the hobby that was my first wrasse and he eventually picked off the snails. Opps. However, not one red planera flatworm to be found! The reason I bought him. Now my kids love him because he’s the rainbow fish, I can’t get rid of him.

 

[Jesterrace]

I don't know about the LFS, since mine is pretty knowledgeable. Among my favorite noob mistakes are the folks who try to setup their saltwater tanks like a freshwater tank (ie goofy decorations, gravel, bubbler, and most importantly no live rock/dry rock) and then wonder why it won't cycle or what is wrong, or people who put in sand and saltwater (once again no rock) and then expect it to cycle. One of the many reasons why I roll my eyes when someone says "You need X number of years of freshwater experience before trying saltwater"