What's your biggest mishap in reefing?

[Murica]

Of course my auto correct changed it to reading rather than reefing. Moderator if you see this please change it to reefing


A place to share your biggest mistakes, screw ups, accidents, etc.

I bought a fifty gallon trash barrel to cure my live rock in. The barrel was on casters so I could easily move it from my closet to my tank when it was done curing.

Filled up with water and rocks, everything was going great [emoji106]

Let my dogs out and shortly later called them back in. With the back door still open, I looked back at the barrel and saw that it was lop sided on the casters. I quickly rushed in to go fix it but my dang beagle decided to bolt out of the house towards my neighbors. I ran after her and as I crossed the threshold to go outside.... It was like a tsunami in my spare bedroom. About forty gallons of water splashed on the wide pine floor to the house we bought a few months prior.

The wide pine had spaces between so most of the water went straight to my basement and the rest in my central air duct work.

All the ceiling tiles, carpet, my wife's wedding dress, boxes of stuff we were still moving in, were all destroyed. About ten gallons in my ducts and about ten gallons behind walls. My insulation came down and all the furniture and clothes in my spare bedroom where the barrel was... Destroyed. I called my wife and just said to get home. I put a dehumidifier in my basement and pulled about thirty gallons of water.

Still worth it.

 

[Jisko]

Of course my auto correct changed it to reading rather than reefing. Moderator if you see this please change it to reefing


A place to share your biggest mistakes, screw ups, accidents, etc.

I bought a fifty gallon trash barrel to cure my live rock in. The barrel was on casters so I could easily move it from my closet to my tank when it was done curing.

Filled up with water and rocks, everything was going great [emoji106]

Let my dogs out and shortly later called them back in. With the back door still open, I looked back at the barrel and saw that it was lop sided on the casters. I quickly rushed in to go fix it but my dang beagle decided to bolt out of the house towards my neighbors. I ran after her and as I crossed the threshold to go outside.... It was like a tsunami in my spare bedroom. About forty gallons of water splashed on the wide pine floor to the house we bought a few months prior.

The wide pine had spaces between so most of the water went straight to my basement and the rest in my central air duct work.

All the ceiling tiles, carpet, my wife's wedding dress, boxes of stuff we were still moving in, were all destroyed. About ten gallons in my ducts and about ten gallons behind walls. My insulation came down and all the furniture and clothes in my spare bedroom where the barrel was... Destroyed. I called my wife and just said to get home. I put a dehumidifier in my basement and pulled about thirty gallons of water.

Still worth it.

idk whats worse my dad setting up a return line wrong and shooting water almost to the ceiling or me doing water changes and having the hose fall out of the bucket and emptying my tank onto the floor haha

 

[Reefrookie220]

@Murica your still married? LOL!

 

[Jisko]

@Murica your still married? LOL!

I wonder the same thing haha

my mother just looks the other way now when my father is working on his tank. I think she prays he ruins the floor so she can get new flooring put in haha

 

[Murica]

@Murica your still married? LOL!

Don't ask me how!!! Hahaha. She was very supportive.. I'm thinking she's saving it for one day when she wants something lol

 

[Reefrookie220]

Don't ask me how!!! Hahaha. She was very supportive.. I'm thinking she's saving it for one day when she wants something lol

The floor is one thing. The dress would have been a deal breaker lol

 

[e572]

I guess for me it's when I started, I had no idea what anything was in a tank and the lfs I found in the beginning was absolutely no help whatsoever. I got my live rock there and it was full of bristle worms. And when I say full, see pics attached. I think the leader escaped and is living in my wall to this day. So I got some pieces out of their frag tank I now know were dying and all had a hitchhiker aiptasia attached. Needless to say before I knew what they were I had at least a thousand aiptasia and could not get rid of them. So what corals I had that were not brown and already removed from my tank were a few zoa and a xenia that sorta were alive. They would not grow because no one ever told me about testing, let alone dosing. That was for hard corals they said, which they did not carry and I now know why, because they have no clue how to care for them. I had to take out the fish and start a whole new tank. I would have just gave up if I had not found the store I use today. I guess in a way, the first shop was responsible for me finding all my friends I hang out with now on a daily basis. So for that I'm thankful but still wasted a ton of money. And if anyone ever tries to say these pics are mine, I'll deny it!!!

 

[SteveSTL]

My wife's personal splurge is to have a cleaning lady come in every couple of weeks. Standing instruction is to stay out of my office. It's where the tank is and more often, there's piles of drawings, bills, etc. that haven't been put away.
Regular lady couldn't make it one day so she had her friend do it. Didn't tell her about my office...she saw some salt spray on the wall and was wiping it down with a Chlorox sponge and proceeded to drop it my tank. 80-90% loss and just been sitting for the past couple months full of algae. Was going to take it down and do a planted tank but just had a brainstorm this morning and will be doing something I don't think I've ever seen before.

First step will be making a new stand. Have a bunch of cherry in the shop and hope to start on that next week.

 

[e572]

My wife's personal splurge is to have a cleaning lady come in every couple of weeks. Standing instruction is to stay out of my office. It's where the tank is and more often, there's piles of drawings, bills, etc. that haven't been put away.
Regular lady couldn't make it one day so she had her friend do it. Didn't tell her about my office...she saw some salt spray on the wall and was wiping it down with a Chlorox sponge and proceeded to drop it my tank. 80-90% loss and just been sitting for the past couple months full of algae. Was going to take it down and do a planted tank but just had a brainstorm this morning and will be doing something I don't think I've ever seen before.

First step will be making a new stand. Have a bunch of cherry in the shop and hope to start on that next week.

That's terrible so sorry but I can't wait to see what you do. I love when inspiration gets to come from something destructive.

 

[maroun.c]

Seam failure and flooding the whole house with 400 gallons of saltwater. Of course it had to happen the night i traveled and wife was alone. Luckily lfs responded at 2:00 am and we were able to save all livestock except for couple minor losses.

 

[glb]

Killing off a tank because I didn't know that chloramines can't be detected with a TDS meter.

 

[pirate2876]

Killing off a tank because I didn't know that chloramines can't be detected with a TDS meter.

Learned this recently as well.

 

[glb]

Learned this recently as well.

It was my own fault. The RODI filters were really old. Live and learn!

 

[Clownman727]

Using PH buffer to chase PH and raised my ALK to high to fast and killed almost every coral in my tank.

 

[delv2323]

I cooked a batch of new rocks with what I thought was Lanthanum Chloride...I found out it was LC with copper sulfate when I put the rocks in and everything either died or bleached to within an inch of its life. Not a good day...

 

[glb]

Using PH buffer to chase PH and raised my ALK to high to fast and killed almost every coral in my tank.

Oh I think we've all done that!

 

[Murica]

That's terrible so sorry but I can't wait to see what you do. I love when inspiration gets to come from something destructive.

Yes send pics with your progress

 

[beaslbob]

two things.

one very similar to OPs, moving tank had a 20g or so garbage can full tip over in the living room. with some livestock. Fortunately it was slab on grade and carpet. Just used the wet/dry vac to get some and the carpet shampooer to do clean up.

worse was when I thought I could frag some sps. So put on latex type gloves so as not to contaminate the sps. Did the fragging and in 8 hours all fish were extremely stressed and our favorite fish died by the next morning (three year old yellow tang 4-5"). Ammonia (api kit) was way beyond 8ppm with the final color being a dark black. I moved all the fish except 2 I couldn't to a 20g macro algae tank and those fish recovered in hours. A Banggai cardinalfish went from horizontal to vertical for instance. We lost an additional fish in the next week or so.
I treated with prime per instructions based on 8ppm ammonia. The tank experienced and extreme pH crash and recovered about 3 week later with a very deep cycle.

The fish in the 20g were transferred back but all corals in the tank were lost.

The gloves must have introduced a toxin (antibiotic) that created the crash by probably killing the bacteria.

Only tank crash I have had since starting with FW back in the late '70's. And lesson learned.

 

[Salty1962]

Vodka dosed and power went out and bacteria starved the tank of oxygen. Killed all of my fish [emoji17]

 

[Scorpius]

I seem to be plagued with equipment failure and stupid errors on my part.
Had my heater fail on me as it collected water inside it. Lucky I didn't get electrocuted.
Had my HOB protein skimmer overfill onto my power strip almost burning my house down.
Forgot to turn my alkalinity dosing pump timer back to auto. Ran 8 hrs straight raising my alk to 16.3 dkh
Recently had my alkalinity dosing pump timer fail and didn't dose for almost 48hrs.

Pests I've collected over the years to to laziness in QT. AEFW, Red Bugs, Bryopsis, Cotton Candy Algae, Polyclad Flatworm, Vermetid Snails. I probably forgot something....