Share your NOOB experience and WIN a TUNZE Reefpack 250!

[Squishie89]

I'm such a noob that I have no idea what noob mistake I'm sure I've already made. Every post I read I have to google every other word and or acronym to figure out what's being said. I still don't know what LFS stands for although I'm sure it's the local aquarium store. I've had my 120g tank for only 3 weeks and have just recently added some snails and hermit crabs to add to the live rock and live sand added when I set it up. It would be cool if there was a thread that explained all the acronyms. It can be a very intimidating hobby for the noob. To refugium or not to refugium. Calcium reactor, GFO and carbon reactor, UV filter, Skimmer, and the list goes on and on as to what I'm clueless about. **** the torpedos, full speed ahead via many boneheaded mistakes. But, that's how we learn.

1. On thise forum if an acronym is underlined with a dotted line, like LFS, it means you can hover over it to see what it means. Obviously this only works on computers instead of phones. And yes, LFS means local fish store.

2.It sounds like you are making a good start and taking it nice and slow.

3. There is no cursing or even masked cursing on this forum, so you might want to watch that.

4. It does take time to learns all the slang/words for this hobby, I still do not have them all down. All you can do is read and research.


Almost forgot my original intent on coming to this thread-when is the drawing for the winner? It does not say on the first post.

 

[bige]

When I first started I have/had a biocube 29 and I bought every coral or fish I saw. I had a yellow tang, vlangii tang and a powder blue. Not to mention my Randall's goby, two shark nose gobies, two clowns and a dotty back. But that was in 08. I was silly then. Didn't even know about forums till everything started to die.

 

[_sludgefactory]

I think a lot of us pulled this one. Crushed coral.

 

[johnwin84]

I did not read the directions and over dosed some phosphate remover thus killing my yellow tang

 

[swayd]

One of my many mistakes was buying a rose bubble tip anemone for a 2 day old 9gallon system. I walked in an Lfs and thought how cool it would be to buy a home for my future nemo not know anything about coral care. Sadly it died and I started to research and found out I had a lot to learn before I could even buy fish lol.

 

[youngtimothy]

I put a yellow tang, 2 clowns and a Pygmy angel into a 12 gallon eclipse all because the LFS said "oh yea your still way below the 1 inch per gallon norm" a lot good came out of it though. I learned 75% water changes every day were no fun! I learned Research Research Research! And when my tang got HLLE I learned it was time to get my new 100 gallon tank! My tang recovered perfectly!

 

[drtyjrzy]

Ummmmm just the other day I decided to "upgrade" my return pump from my sump so I used some monster size pump I got from a guy on craigslist. Not realizing just how powerful the pump was I plugged it in and watched as my tank soon began to over flow from the top, after flooding my living room(wife was at work) I though it would make sense to unplug while everything was soaking yet, yeah I electrocuted myself. I was able to get the pump shut down, and replaced it with the original one. Luckily I didn't loose anything but the livingroom took about a day to dry out, and my hand was numb for two!!!!

 

[livewirejoe]

First time using kalkwasser misread the directions. Mixed up a batch equaling 50 gallons of kalk mix, and proceeded to use the 50 gallons to do a partial water change to my 125 gallon tank. What a heck of a mess, killed off several coral and fish, amazingly my green mandrin survived.

 

[bonomo53]

yup also made the mistake to start out with crushed coral

 

[uncle dover]

I screwed up my pH in my tank by dumping instead of dripping, a bucket of solution in all at once.....fish floating sideways is a dead give away you messed up.

 

[Zoomer]

Not understanding/respecting just how fast green star polyps will grow :neutral:

 

[michaelsmith123]

When I was a beginner and knew little about the hobby, I saw a rock covered in aptaisa and thought it was coral so I bought it! A couple month later I had fish in the tank and noticed that they would get stung when they got close to the aptasia tenticals. I went to the lfs and they told me I need to get rid of it. I asked them how and they said I need to spray lemon juice in the mouth of each one. I got home and imeadiatly got a syringe filled it with lemon juice and went to work. After a couple hours the water was tinted yellow. It was late so I went to bed. The next morning I checked to see how my tank was doing. Sadly a couple soft corals and a fish had died and I still had the aptasia! I quickly went to the lfs and got water for a water change and some carbon to remove the lemon juice. After I did about a 50% water change and added the carbon everything was okay. I went on the Internet and looked for some natural solutions to kill the aptasia. I ended up waiting a week to make sure the water was fine for fish and I bought about five blue leg hermit crabs and two peppermint shrimp. They ate all the aptaisa within a week. And I no longer had aptasia.

 

[oceangirl2009]

I bought one of those cheapo heaters to start, it malfunctioned and electrocuted everything in my tank. Now I refuse to run a tank without a grounding probe.

 

[Ed Hahn]

Doing saltwater changes and killing animals....

I purchased a RO/DI made up water to specific gravity matched and temps.. I did water change and killed animals. I did not allow time for gas exchange- water comes out of RO/DI at a ph of 5. I did not use a powerhead long enough to allow ph to match. PH and temp being two most common killers of fish. If you use a powerhead or pump to allow gas exchange over time your ph will usually be a 8.2 - 8.3 if you mix at the manufacturers design formulas.

 

[LukeG]

I was honest with my wife about how much I spent. ;-)

 

[Penni]

One of our corals stung our large beautiful brain. Never realized the tentacles on that coral were so long

 

[bkhunt]

Well I have had my tank for about 9 months and had to tear all the rock out twice to remove a fish sold to me by the LFS. First one was a dragon goby who would put sand all over ever rock from top to bottom. Traded fish in and got another sand sifting goby that I was told stayed close to the bottom. I did stay closer to the bottom and only went half way up the tank so I had to tear all the rock out and get it out. Lesson no more sand sifters!!!

 

[bige]

When is the drawing? Did I miss that info somewhere?

 

[clint]

I decided one day I was going to build a Reef. I went and bought my Biocube and everything to get it up and going. I was so dead set on getting my Reef going that I just decided to get fish and corals in the first couple days. I fortunately did not lose anything, but nothing was happy. I now have a very happy and thriving reef. I have learned a whole lot from forums and reading reading and more reading.

 

[jomatty]

We were at the beach fishing and I caught a flounder that was about 4-5 inches long. It was adorable. I thought "Why not take it home and put it in my tank, I have seen flounder for sale on live aquaria before". So I bought a bubbler, brought it home, and put it in the tank. No quarantine, no nothing, not to mention it came from water much colder than a reef tank. To make a long story short it had a disease and killed every single fish in my tank, except for one cardinal that I managed to move to a friends tank that was finishing cycling but had no fish in it yet. That was a sad day, but a valuable lesson about going slow and learning as much as you possibly can about everything you are thinking of doing.