Stupid mistakes... anyone else?

[DeniseAndy]

My RO system is at my sink I without thinking about it made 15 gallons of tap water salt mix and killed all my invertebrates and coral frags what the heck...

Ouch!

 

[Captmcfly]

Yea not impressed.. almost gave up on salt water all together. Must have had very high copper or something

 

[DeniseAndy]

Yea not impressed.. almost gave up on salt water all together. Must have had very high copper or something

Could have been chlorine or chloramines. Did you have fish that died too?

 

[Captmcfly]

No fish just inverts and coral. Only fish in there were damsels couldn't get lucky enough for them to die

 

[DeniseAndy]

Then not chlorine. That will kill fish faster than corals. Witnessed that myself. Not my tank, one I was assisting with and had sabotaged (I will not get into that!)

 

[Michael Cronmiller]

 

[Michael Cronmiller]

At least it's beginning to make a come back

 

[DentistReefer413]

Not a costly mistake, but I felt bad nonetheless... When upgrading my tank, I removed a couple pieces of rock that I didn't want in the new tank and put them outside. About 45 minutes later, my wife asked if I transferred the porcelain crab... There it was, upside down on the ground and a completely different color. She threw him in the tank and nudged at him. In about an hour he had made a full recovery. How'd he stay out of the water for 45 minutes!?!?! Still alive.
Next time I'll be sure to do a better head-count.

 

[2Wheelsonly]

The old siphoning coral by accident is almost like a reefers passage right. We've all done it and those who haven't likely will. Lol. Your coral should be fine. Last week I accidentally got to close to the large trachyphillia and it literally left fluorescence on the drain tube. We've all been there.

I can barely get my siphons to suck up sand let alone corals... Wonder what i'm doing wrong!?

 

[Lifer]

One summer I had the brainy idea since it was summer and the tank temperature was everyday and night around 80 I decided that for the summer I could unplug my heater. Bad move as we had a cold spell and apparently the tank temperature dropped about 10 degrees several nights in a row causing my powder brown tang to get ick that made it to just about every fish. Lost about 10 fish due to ick. Since then I always leave the heater plugged in no matter how warm it is! Hard lesson learned!

 

[DSC reef]

I can barely get my siphons to suck up sand let alone corals... Wonder what i'm doing wrong!?

I just use a tube without the vacuum end on it. I run bare bottom so I need suction for detritus.

 

[Patientman]

ONE of my biggest mistakes is telling the Mrs. how much some of the newly acquired fish co$t!

 

[Duraticate]

So lets see the worst i think is when i first got into the hobby i had no idea what i was looking at. Check out my story at dont give up to get a back story but.... When i was having issues with hair algae and other nutrient problems i decided to remove the top 1 inch of my entire substrate on my 29 bio which i had no idea what was in it but nasty looking bugs and algae. Not knowing that was also everything that was good. A small tank crash.

 

[Renelope]

Went to scrub the algae off the back glass/overflow box with a magic eraser... accidentally grabbed one that contained soap.
Freaked out and did a water change immediately as you could smell the fragrant soap and bubbles started forming in the sump.
Luckily nothing died and the parameters came back fine after water change... so lucky!

 

[Kengar]

So.....I'm pretty sure I killed a pretty nice double headed hammer today.[emoji36] While siphoning during a water change... I looked away for a moment, and when I looked back, there's my hammer stuck to the end of the siphon tube. Tore pretty much all the fleshy parts away. Don't know if it will come back.... arrrggghh. Anyone else killed their coral while being dumb?

Pouring some water out of bag with new fish over the sink -- garbage disposal side -- to reduce volume for drip acclimation. Big mistake. Fish -- a pearly headed jawfish -- came out of the bag and went right into the disposal. Couldn't get it out for the life of me ....... eventually flipped the switch to make it quick.

 

[Mangelotta1]

Pouring some water out of bag with new fish over the sink -- garbage disposal side -- to reduce volume for drip acclimation. Big mistake. Fish -- a pearly headed jawfish -- came out of the bag and went right into the disposal. Couldn't get it out for the life of me ....... eventually flipped the switch to make it quick.

That's rough

 

[Joshua Warne]

Fragged some corals while having a few beers. Set the iodine water on the top of my tank, turned around for a second, and BAM! Dropped 2ml of iodine into a 50g tank.... Needless to say, I had a bit of a mini cycle happen. Did a 20g w/c and things bounced back pretty well. Sad day for my healthy bacterias.

 

[Michael Cronmiller]

Pouring some water out of bag with new fish over the sink -- garbage disposal side -- to reduce volume for drip acclimation. Big mistake. Fish -- a pearly headed jawfish -- came out of the bag and went right into the disposal. Couldn't get it out for the life of me ....... eventually flipped the switch to make it quick.

Ouch

 

[Captmcfly]

Not a costly mistake, but I felt bad nonetheless... When upgrading my tank, I removed a couple pieces of rock that I didn't want in the new tank and put them outside. About 45 minutes later, my wife asked if I transferred the porcelain crab... There it was, upside down on the ground and a completely different color. She threw him in the tank and nudged at him. In about an hour he had made a full recovery. How'd he stay out of the water for 45 minutes!?!?! Still alive.
Next time I'll be sure to do a better head-count.

When buying my live rock at the lfs " one hrs drive away " I brought home a lawnmower bleene apparently he was in a rock. He was out of the water for almost 3 hrs. In a cooler kept moist with the rocks.
That was 6 months ago and he's happy as a clam now. My son found him laying in the cooler after all the rocks had been laid in the tank.

 

[CenlaReefer]

Some LPS corals are more tough than most people realize. I am glad yours looks like it will make it.

I have made more stupid mistakes than I can count. I fragged a favia like a barbarian with a chisel; it was the absolute worst job imaginable yet all the frags survived.

Here is another story: I make my own custom frag rocs with aragonite and concrete. They are look very flat and like real reef rock. I like them because the fags looks like actual live rock once glued to the aquascape. Well because I did not realize there were corals on one of these rocks, I kept a zoa/paly frag upside down for at least two or more weeks before I realized my mistake. When I turned it over I asked myself, "What are these two worms under this rock?" Come to find out, it was two zoa/paly polyps trying to stretch for the light. I am amazed I did not kill that one.