Let's list all the things that can go wrong

[chasedasea]

85 year old landlords who come by while you are on vacation and turn off the A/C since he knew you wouldn't be there and genuinely thinks he was being helpful. It was in Florida during the peak of summer. For me it equaled 2 dead chinchilla's, 2 overheated lizards and a 55g reef tank full of foulness, but my maroon clown survived and he is now over 8 years old.

 

[sanababit]

Coralife powerstrips, jejejee
Tank sprungs a leak

Sana

 

[mpoletti]

Beware of repainting your house

 

[klepto]

Eating some food after feeding your fish. yum
Failure to properly and regularly calibrate refractometers and TDS meters.
Trusting expired test kits.
Taking your "friend's" opinions as facts.

 

[bolo7735]

Light accalmation. I don't know how many corals I bleach out on my 400w MH because some reefer said they can handle high light.

Know your chemicals and understand why and how much to dose. This hobby can get overwhelm with so much information on RC.

 

[cwegescheide]

Sticky float valves.. I give mine a jiggle every once in a while to make sure they dont have any build up on them..

CLEAN YOUR OVERFLOWS
Be sure to clean the algae build up off of them every once in a while to avoid an overflow

CALIBRATE YOUR REFRACTOMETER
My last major tank disaster was due to a refracto that was WAY out of calibration. I thought the decline in coral health was because of old bulbs. Didn't even thing to check my refracto until the damage was done. Now I have 2 of them and calibrate 1 every couple months.

 

[Merfin70]

Gravity & siphons. Spent months fiddling with my top off float switch trying to figure out why every once an a while it would stick (or so I thought) and go crazy and overfill my sump. The overfill of course caused my skimmer to freak and overflow, normally when the cup was 3/4 full of nasty nasty things. Result = really po'ed corals, over and over again.

After months I finally saw what was happening with my own eyes. Turns out the hose end was lower than the water level in my jug when I filled the jug to the top ...... and we all know what happens with that now dont we. I don't normally fill it to the top so never caught the pattern.

So so simple to forget how siphons work.

+1 also the the stopped up doser hose. Been there. Dosed nothing but Alk for almost 2 months before the mega precip event. Not pretty.

 

[mpoletti]

How about a skimmer overflow which causes it to dump skimmed water over the edge of the sump and burn up a pump or two?

 

[Dejavu]

Panicking in a trouble situation"¦. Only making it worst. I know this has happen to a few good reefers.

 

[GhostCon1]

Alk swings, high nutrients, sump level getting too low and causing your return pump to run dry and making a flurry of microbubbles all over ****ing off the sps, rogue crabs, blennies, MANY things can go wrong

 

[Underwaterparadise]

Faulty CO2 regulator for CA reactor

 

[jimroth]

Sticky float valves.. I give mine a jiggle every once in a while to make sure they dont have any build up on them..

Just had this tonight, darn it. Sump was way down, almost sucking air. If you add calcium, they're gonna stick eventually, it's just a question of when!

I have teenage boys, so a lot of my reef-related nightmares involve hard objects versus glass, accidentally fired pellet guns etc. That said, I once found myself on a stepladder by the tank and rested a claw hammer on the rim. That gave me a chill, I had to sit down for a while.

 

[klepto]

Panicking in a trouble situation…. Only making it worst. I know this has happen to a few good reefers.

Good one Brian.
I think we all have fallen victim to this fault. Sometimes this hobby wears on me and I make hurried decisions at crucial moments (already elbow deep). Slowing down and thinking things through is probably the best lesson that aquarists can take away from the hobby.

Great idea on the thread Mark. It will be interesting to see how many times some of the same issues are mentioned... perhaps a poll ranking some of the most common issues could help to display the results..

 

[SDguy]

Using too short a piece of airline tubing as a straw to suck up PE mysis when feeding your fish. Oh wait, you meant things that can go wrong with the tank... NM

 

[KJAhp098]

How about a skimmer overflow which causes it to dump skimmed water over the edge of the sump and burn up a pump or two?

Wow...I've had the Ca reactor line clogged, the sea hare in the powerhead, and the skimmer overflow the edge of my sump...except it spilled about 10 gallons onto the wood floor. Wish I knew how to set up the ASO on the skimmer.

 

[mpoletti]

Something in the truly baffling category; pathogens or other chemical warfare in the tank.

 

[gasman059]

Well soo many but here's the must recent one-- just two days ago.

Day off from work kidz and wife gone = time to clean the tank powerheads etc etc etc oops bump into the main return and bulkhead springs a leak! ( why was I in such a hurry years back and did not use flex pvc)
Tow days later frag tank out bulkhead dremmeled out and a couple of electrical mishaps from that good ol sprinkle of saltwater .

Moral to the story as usual if it aint broken don't fix it or clean it .

Just about all of the above have happened to me:
Here's my list of solutions.

1-Aqaurium controller with several settings to avoid overflows ( float valves x 2) skimmer and sump
2-Clog calcium reactor line-- peristaltic pump sucking the effleunt = no more issues ever
3-COntroller to avoid lights on when chiller fails
4-If I only had ONE and ONLY ONE test kit ALKALINITY!!!!!!!!!--- I measure mine once a week and thats a lot for me. Lost of things can go wrong but alkalinity is by far the worst of them all.

 

[mpoletti]

For some reason, just you posting Manny reminded me of Roger's tank disaster when his front pane bursted off

 

[dmorel]

Stray voltage in the tank from a bad piece of equipment
Snails knocking that 1/4" frag of $500 efflo (or insert your dream frag of choice here) down into the sand bed/onto some other frag, etc... never to be seen again
Jumpers (you wrasses know I'm talking about you!)

 

[gasman059]

For some reason, just you posting Manny reminded me of Roger's tank disaster when his front pane bursted off

DUde don't even go there-- I just had a clear reminder of that exact scenario when my bulkhead started leaking.
The bottom line is if you have a tank there's going to be some issues along the way-- its part of this wonderful hobby. I've had my fair share of them over the last 15 or so years.

BTW I still have nightmares of black tangs/burgess/and all kinds of high end fish floating around that household.

That tank is back up and doing great.
I just went thru my stored pics and this where taken maybe a week before that awful incident.

[/IMG]

[/IMG]

[/IMG]

[/IMG]

Sorry for the derail now back on track with the thread!:beer: