Mistakes: my most outstanding...yes...really bad moves.

Sk8r

Staff member
RC Mod
1. putting a ghost eel into a reef...no, wait! BELIEVING the lfs' assurances it only ate mysis was the stupid bit. [300.00 worth of fish and a tank rebuild, catching the creature. It WAS pretty, and would have been fine, solo---if you could afford endless live fish for it to eat.] It was, however, thoroughly reef-safe. Didn't eat a single coral. But they do require live fish---about one a day.

2. putting a large anemone into a 100g reef with two clarkii. Where does an 800 lb gorilla sleep? Anywhere it wants to. It overgrew half the tank. And after I sold it off, the clowns kept attacking me and drawing blood whenever I'd service the tank. THEY got to go be breeders in a clown breeding operation.

3. letting caulerpa into my 54g display. There is NOTHING harder to get rid of. Nothing eats it effectively that is appropriate in a 54g.

4. allowing green star polyp to get onto the glass. Anybody want a foot-wide growth of green star polyp? At least it's not on my structural rock!

5. listening to "Oh, let's add some mushrooms" to an sps reef. Can you say, mushrooms grow like weeds, given sps conditions? And they sting just like aiptasia. Mushroom-culturers maybe should take note!

6. using an expired test kit. ANYTIME you are having to dose like crazy and it's not doing any good, your test kits should be the FIRST thing you cross-check. Hereafter, I'm tossing mine at the 1 year mark!

7. setting a corner tank bang against the wall, just because I could. Fixed that one when I moved! Give it a good 8-12".

8. buying a corner tank without regard to where the sump was going to go. If you are getting a 54g corner, there is a sump that will fit, but you have to add it BEFORE you put the tank onto the stand.

These are some of my best ones. Feel free to add some of your own. There's no advice like, Been there, had the tee-shirt!
 
#4 pm me with the details..i want fast growing "weed" type corals kinda like the wilf flower fields you see on the side of the road
 
I'm confused by #5. Don't sps typically like high intensity lighting and mushrooms require lighting that is less intense?

I ask because I have a small watermelon mushroom, but otherwise have a display tank with fairly intense lighting. Right now it is in my fuge and seems to be happy there, but I was considering trying to move it to a shaded area in my DT.
 
Yes, we started with the shrooms lower in the tank, but they (discosomas, which are generally more tolerant of light) rapidly climbed the rock and took over. Generally always start in lower light with softies and they'll grow upward if they are happy with more light. Ours climbed within 12 inches of the mh lights---and would have gone higher if they could. That's within 3" of the surface of the water. The ONLY shroom that stayed low was a discosoma neglecta, which grew like a bandit in the conditions, but took to the underside of rocks. If you have slightly less intense lighting areas, you will find shrooms sorting themselves out, the more light-tolerant winning out in the higher levels, and the less seeking areas of reflected light. Want to sell a few? Set a rock in the middle of your mushroom field and they'll colonize. Move the rock and they'll lose no time filling in. This also goes for kenya tree, and even montipora sps. I have two patches of montipora on my structural rock right now that is kind of weedlike.
 
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