Share your NOOB experience and WIN a TUNZE Reefpack 250!
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jtgordon20
Active Member
My first tank, when I started at 16 years old. I bought a biocube 29 gallon with expensive live rock ($300 worth, first noob mistake). When filling up came along, I used tap water with conditioner. Later on, I come to discover my rocks were leaching phosphates and always built up nasty algae. All came down to that tap water!!! Always use RO/DI water that you can check with a TDS meter for 0 tds.
Zoaddict
New Member
Well when my husband and I first started we did the big no no and used tap water in our tanks. Once the dino really kicked in and was threatening to kill our corals my husband did his research and soon we had an RODI unit.
afamousjohnson
Valuable Member
I have a classic noob story-
When I started my first tank I was running a tipical 1st timer tank with an inadiquite flow and lighting for a 30g hex. I now know I was running a FOWLR tank with a large amount of low light pest corals/organisms. I never ventured into the coral side of things due to the high prices of needed upgrades and addvice from LFS. Well as any noob one of my favorite things was free hitchhikers that i spotted on pieces of small LR I could buy-especially when they where corals. So I had a tradition of always giving a very detailed look over the LR tank when I would visit my LFS.
Well to make a long story short. I finally spotted a sweet piece of LR covered in corals in the tank. Upon trying to purchase the piece(for LR price of course) An employee I have already butted heads with at one point tells me I dont want this piece of LR. Which makes me super suspicous. When I asked why, he says "those are aptasia anemones, and will spread like crazy in your tank." After a heated arrgument and me accussing him of just wanting to wait till I left the store so he could take the LR out and sell it in one of their coral tanks for more $ I ended up getting my way and purchasing the piece of LR. I was happy with my new corals and never looked any further into it. After noticing they would grab food floating by I started individually feeding them all large pieces of krill along with all the other pest anemones I had aquired and man they were doing good
Outcome: I ended up with a FOWLR tank sporting a grip load of low light pest anemones that I know now SUCK classic noobie move.
Remember kids...always do your research. Know what your getting yourself into. It will make all of the difference in the future.
When I started my first tank I was running a tipical 1st timer tank with an inadiquite flow and lighting for a 30g hex. I now know I was running a FOWLR tank with a large amount of low light pest corals/organisms. I never ventured into the coral side of things due to the high prices of needed upgrades and addvice from LFS. Well as any noob one of my favorite things was free hitchhikers that i spotted on pieces of small LR I could buy-especially when they where corals. So I had a tradition of always giving a very detailed look over the LR tank when I would visit my LFS.
Well to make a long story short. I finally spotted a sweet piece of LR covered in corals in the tank. Upon trying to purchase the piece(for LR price of course) An employee I have already butted heads with at one point tells me I dont want this piece of LR. Which makes me super suspicous. When I asked why, he says "those are aptasia anemones, and will spread like crazy in your tank." After a heated arrgument and me accussing him of just wanting to wait till I left the store so he could take the LR out and sell it in one of their coral tanks for more $ I ended up getting my way and purchasing the piece of LR. I was happy with my new corals and never looked any further into it. After noticing they would grab food floating by I started individually feeding them all large pieces of krill along with all the other pest anemones I had aquired and man they were doing good
Outcome: I ended up with a FOWLR tank sporting a grip load of low light pest anemones that I know now SUCK classic noobie move.Remember kids...always do your research. Know what your getting yourself into. It will make all of the difference in the future.
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back in the day we had a really nice 75 gal setup going with pc lights. i bought a 90 cube to upgrade to and bought a metal halide setup off of ebay cause i had to have mh lights cause evryone else did.
well we got evrything switched and turned on the new lights and we were both like ewww. why is so yellow. i told my wife thats how mh looked. I didnt know anything about color temp. the lights that came with it were 6500k and yellow as can be and after a few weeks algae covered and killed everything. i sold the mh to someone else who then explained to me about temp of light. man did i feel stupid
this was around 2001.
and yes i still have my seaclone skimmer that at one point ran as the only skimmer on an aggressive 390 gal tank (i always wondered why my nitrates were high):tsk:
bob
well we got evrything switched and turned on the new lights and we were both like ewww. why is so yellow. i told my wife thats how mh looked. I didnt know anything about color temp. the lights that came with it were 6500k and yellow as can be and after a few weeks algae covered and killed everything. i sold the mh to someone else who then explained to me about temp of light. man did i feel stupid
this was around 2001.
and yes i still have my seaclone skimmer that at one point ran as the only skimmer on an aggressive 390 gal tank (i always wondered why my nitrates were high):tsk:
bob
TANKSALOT
Well-Known Member
I started with a 29 gallon tank with an HOB filter.
I was told that Mangroves would help keep the Nitrates down.
I bought some and planted them in the tank........ completely submerged.
I post PIC's on the forum and was quickly told that they needed to have the tops out of the water.
Oooops..... we all have to learn
I was told that Mangroves would help keep the Nitrates down.
I bought some and planted them in the tank........ completely submerged.
I post PIC's on the forum and was quickly told that they needed to have the tops out of the water.
Oooops..... we all have to learn
Dave3112
2500 Club Member
My NOOB experience was back in 1993 so that should be enough said right there. LOL. But my first tank was a 40T complete with under gravel filter and NO fluorescent lighting. The worst part was not rinsing the crushed coral and clouding the tank for a week! The LFS said it wasn't needed. :/
I bought my 30g system from craigslist and being a n00b I set it up as is without planning it out...though I did plan out putting tile in my room instead of carpet...with that being said it's safe to say I had a lot of water on my floor during power outages, and water changes. Used to bum me out big time!
Squishie89
Glub Glub
Ahahaha I have yet for it to overflow, but I do forget I am making RODI water. The other night it was about 10mm away from overfilling. I had come in to the kitchen by chance.
aquaticgeek
New Member
My first Saltwater noob experience was purchasing a galaxia coral. I was window shopping and bought a coral i knew nothing about. First noob part was "window shopping" which is a no no in most reef aquarium cases. Second is that the coral was about 3/4 dead when i got it. Third was i knew nothing about its care and personality. Fourth was despite all this i did it anyway. I took the coral home and couldn't figure out why it continued to die back. then i did what i should have done in the first place and did some research. Moral of the story is don't buy dying corals that have long sweeper tentacles with out knowing what and how to care for them. On a positive note through research i learned how to better place it in my tank along with feeding practices and it eventually came back not only to the size i bought it at but on to cover all the dead skeleton left behind from my coral cruelty. Hope this story help someone.
Happy Fishkeeping
Happy Fishkeeping
saltwaternoob
Valuable Member
Been there and done that many times!!!
box209
Community Member
Two noob mistakes, first was using tap water. boy was that field of grass nice looking. second was putting a angle fish in my reef tank goodbye Zoas
lol. well at least we all learn something at the end of our noob mistakes right????
lol. well at least we all learn something at the end of our noob mistakes right????
landlord
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I bid 390 bucks and won the final purple monster frag from SPSFrags.com back in 2003. At the time I was very new and had a ghastly mixed reef. The PM survived about 2 days.
Kurt
Kurt 
Daniel@R2R
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I was told macro algae was good for my display tank by a guy selling me his live rock...turns out the "macro algae" that was on the rock was bryopsis...which took over my tank. I'm just finally getting it under control.
Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2
Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2
Chameleon
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Bought a damsel for 3 dollars at petco to 'test the water' as my first fish. Spent a week trying to catch the little bugger 3 months later after he started attacking my new clown fish.
steamer51
Active Member
The day I finally set up my 55 in 2006 after two years of research I learned that the center brace on an aquarium is important. The tank was used and apparently someone had used the brace as a handle to pick it up so it was broken off. I leveled the tank on the stand, added new sand and live rock I bought from a reefer breaking down a tank, filled it half way with the water I had on hand, added heater and powerheads for circulation and everything looked great. That night I made and mixed more water, filled it up the next day and I finally had my tank completed to start the cycle. I checked how things were looking an hour later and there was a steady drip of water coming down the front of the stand from under the tank. Because the center brace was missing the tank had bowed slightly and was leaking. I quickly drained the water back into the stock tank the rock was in and added the rock and sand to keep it alive. My daughter had a ball python in a 55 that did not leak so I cleaned that out and swapped it with my leaky one and started all over with the set up. Probably not a good idea to use a snake tank for a reef due to germs but everything worked out ok with no further problems.
Jarettc16
Community Member
Ive had a 55 gallon fresh water tank for about 10 years. After my buddy got a salt water reef tank, i fell in love. I broke down my 55 gallon fresh water & purchased what i thought was a good deal for 110 gallon pre-drilled salt water reef tank fully established from a guy that was sick & could no longer take care of it. I paid 600 dollars for everything, which from researching this was a great deal. Well the day i showed up to break the tank down, the guy got rushed to the hospital in ambulance. Leaving me and my friend in his house breaking this thing apart w/ no idea what im really doing. 15 hours later, i had the tank set up in my home. Everything was going great, until one day i come home & everything looked terrible. Half of my corals looked dead. Rushed a water sample to the fish store & told me the water temp was really high. Go home & temp was 86. Needless to say i had a fish/coral cookout.
So the whole time i was blamming in on my metal halide, come to find out the thermostat readying to heater had pulled out of water. I managed to save one fish out of the whole deal and a few brains, but then a week later my powerhead somehow sucked up my fish and he died.
Needless to say, dont buy used stuff. I think i have replaced everything that orginally came w/ the tank.
Also the first 4 weeks, i was mixing up salt water everyday when the water table dropped in the sump thinking i had to add salt water since it was salt water tank, needless to say i didnt know could top off w/ regular water
So the whole time i was blamming in on my metal halide, come to find out the thermostat readying to heater had pulled out of water. I managed to save one fish out of the whole deal and a few brains, but then a week later my powerhead somehow sucked up my fish and he died.
Needless to say, dont buy used stuff. I think i have replaced everything that orginally came w/ the tank.
Also the first 4 weeks, i was mixing up salt water everyday when the water table dropped in the sump thinking i had to add salt water since it was salt water tank, needless to say i didnt know could top off w/ regular water
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