What's your biggest mishap in reefing?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Murica
  • Start date Start date
  • Tagged users None
BRS
Jump to Last
Biggest mistake was buying a plastic storage tote to use for water changes. Wasn't food grade and leached chemical into my tank, killed some corals, stunted growth, and messed up my SPS colors. Phosphates went from 0.07 to 0.4 quick, took me 2 weeks to figure out that it was the container.
 
Top Shelf Aquatics
SJ-reefer said:
Biggest mistake was buying a plastic storage tote to use for water changes. Wasn't food grade and leached chemical into my tank, killed some corals, stunted growth, and messed up my SPS colors. Phosphates went from 0.07 to 0.4 quick, took me 2 weeks to figure out that it was the container.
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear! It's crazy how the little things can sometimes make all the difference
 
Top Shelf Aquatics
Left the rodi running overnight on my wedding night. Wedding morning mostly ready.. somehow remembered. Went downstairs to about 12 hours of water on the (fully finished) basement floor. Put my wedding dress up over my shoulder and my mom actually took off her skirt and the 2 of us cleaned up as much as we could. Dumped 2 boxes of kitty litter to try and get some of it then headed off to my wedding.

I pulled the best man / tank sitter aside during the reception to let him know. Didn't tell my husband until we got home.

Fortunately nothing was ruined including the hardwood flooring. Very lucky, but as others have said.. worth it in either case. :)

Have since flooded the house a couple of other times and now have a nice loud water sensor on the floor!
 
e572 said:
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!!!

4b76070134ccdb06913694288c001bd1.jpg
117dccc91ec86f4cd8f525145e86dd95.jpg
Click to expand...

Holy bristle worms!! You're not kidding! I was in the same boat with aiptasia. Thought it was so cool that some weird plant was growing on my rock.. Little did I know... My current tank (final) I used all dead rock and seeded it with a very clean live rock. So much better than using all live rock, I have like zero pests or issues. I bought some chaeto from lfs and it had aiptasia in it.. So now I have a aiptasia pop up every now and again.

Gotta say, I love supporting small business and lfs, but every time I go to one I either have a hitchhiker, disease, or something else. I pretty much only order from liveaquaria now.
 
www.dinkinsaquaticgardens.com
About 9 months ago my apex left the heater on overnight. Didn't realize until the next morning, by which time the tank was at 98 F!!! I lost a lot of livestock (including a brand new RBTA, an electric flame scallop, and some non-photosynthetic corals, cleaner shrimp); however, some of the livestock survived (my clownfish, zoas and palys, shrooms, etc). The most interesting loss is that my Pom-Pom Crab survived, but her anemones did not. So I have a Pom-Pom-less Pom-Pom crab. If I see another one for sale at a lfs, I might pick up a second one, as I've heard they can take a Pom-pom from another crab, then grow and split it in 2...
 
This thread is wonderful! Haha.

I started with a 10 gallon, and over reacted at the sight of some harmless algae, probably GHA. Put a towel over the tank to black it out. The corner of the towel fell into the HOB filter, and wicked all but a couple of gallons out onto the floor by the time I got home. No losses though.

It seems so insignificant comparatively!
 
SteveSTL said:
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.
Click to expand...


When I set up my reef tank one of the first things I did was buy cleaning products that were low odor (no perfumes) and I set those out for my cleaning lady to use (she had been using stuff she brought herself). So far it's working. And I don't have that overly strong perfume smell when I come home on cleaning day.
 
I bought a new canister pump some how after I went to work it started dumping water all over the floor/walls then it threw water at my lights destroyed one of my hydra 52's and because it killed the lights and emptied half the tank I lost all my acropora
 
Only in the hobby four months. My biggest mistake was leaving the RO on for, ugh, 2 days. Fortunately the basement isn't finished. The other mistake is going coral shopping and, instead of getting what I came for (and had researched) going "oh, that looks neat, I'll try one of those and one of those and..." Killed a couple of things I wasn't ready for and now I'm not sure I have room for some things that had been on my wish list.
 
the new guy said:
I bought a new canister pump some how after I went to work it started dumping water all over the floor/walls then it threw water at my lights destroyed one of my hydra 52's and because it killed the lights and emptied half the tank I lost all my acropora
Click to expand...

:0 was AL able to help you out at all?
 
Tidal Gardens
Had the drain from my sro 600ext run to a plastic container, with that container sitting in a 10 gallon tank under the DT stand. Would periodically empty the container as it filled up. Adjusted the output valve on my skimmer one morning to skim a little wetter then left for work without checking to make sure i wasn't dumping too much water into the waste container. ATO made sure to keep feeding water to the tank for me as the plastic container then the 10 gallon tank overfilled. Ended up emptying my 40 gallon brute can that i use as my ATO reservoir + most of the sump on the floor. Figured it out when i got home and went to the bedroom to take shoes off after work and heard squishing noises as I walked across the carpet. Wife not happy at all, ran the drain line outside through a cracked open window after that.

Did not install gfci receptacles, was using a koralia powerhead plugged into a extension cord to blow off rocks. Tank is 43" inches tall + the stand so it's harder than it sounds, have to stand on a chair to do it.... Was not paying attention to keeping a drip loop and kept feeling like i was getting stung, eventually figured out that i was shocking the living s**t out of myself when i looked at all the water running down the cord. Did not tell wife, bought gfci outlets that afternoon.
 
I installed a 80 gallon tank for a customer. Everything was going great, got everything plumbed rock and sand in the tank, and started filling it. As soon as the water got to the overflow, the bulkheads started leaking. I had installed the gaskets on the wrong side. Should be an easy fix except the holes in the stand were just big enough to fit the bulkheads and i couldnt get to them to take them off. I had to draing the tank and start over.

Then there was the time that i dropped a schedual 80 bulk head in the tank i had just drilled and built an overflow box. Cracked the bottom glass.
 
Deltec
I was siphoning my tank but the 5 gallon bucket I was using to drain wasn't filling. The bucket had cracked on the bottom and water was everywhere.
 
View ReefStash's latest YouTube video!
BRS

IF YOU HAD TO TAKE A REEFING EXAM, WOULD YOU PASS?

  • Yes!

    Votes: 32 45.7%

  • Not yet, but I have one that I want to buy in mind!

    Votes: 9 12.9%

  • No.

    Votes: 26 37.1%

  • Other (please explain).

    Votes: 3 4.3%
See comments…

New Posts

TCK Corals
Chewy.com
Top Shelf Aquatics
Dinkins Aquatic Gardens
Deltec
World Wide Corals
Tidal Gardens
Nutramar Foods
New Posts
Back
Top