WHen did you rush?

[MWinchell13]

Hi all, I've come home to a house of horrors. My ocellaris was missing, urchin passed on, and engineer goby didn't come out to eat. Why did this happen? I rushed into this tank. I made every mistake in the book and lost two inverts and two fish over it. I didn't acclimate, I removed the safeties off of my overflows, and I turned my pump too high. As a result, my sebae died in a matter of hours and my longspine urchin followed closely after. Then this evening I check the tank and only half of the inhabitants are there. I assume everyone is hiding. I begin to clean my sump and notice that my filter sock is heavy, and I look inside to find my young clown and my eight-inch engineer. I can only assume that they suffered until they eventually suffocated. I feel terrible, and it's all because I rushed to start this tank. Now I've turned down the pump, put safety cages around my overflows, and acclimated my new hermits.

When did you rush and make mistakes in the hobby? What did it cost?

 

[Waters]

Not everyone, but most people rush with their first tank......as bad as your situation was, consider it a learning experience. My first tank was rushed with adding a bunch of livestock WAY too early, in a tank that was WAY too small.

 

[Nooooooooob1]

I rushed in the same ways that many others do. I bought live rock from the local LFS(who is very much in the game to make $, not to spread the goodness of the hobby) that was infested with pests, didn't QT my fish, which luckily hasn't been a problem, and never dipped a coral, which I'm convinced contributed to the mess of my tank.

So now I'm starting a new, bigger tank and doing it very slowly so it stays pure. Hopefully no pests this time.

 

[Jon Fishman]

I did everything wring when I started, and had never owned even a goldfish before.

I haven’t had any losses from it though

 

[BeejReef]

Guilty of a lot of the noob sins as well, but have been retrofitting and getting into better habits.

I'm most guilty of improving the tank when I have a chunk of time... i.e., get the new lights installed, get that big water change done the ICP test wanted, clean out the sump, and do maintenance on the return and powerheads. Then I sit back thinking of all the "good" I've done and the tank looks like hell the next day because I've 1) dropped the nutrients, 2) increased the flow, and 3) changed the light spectrum all at once.