My DUMBEST Thing I've Done In This Hobby Was...

salt e

salt e

In Memoriam
I am making this thread to, really, just make sure i am not alone :D

I THINK , we / most of us have done some pretty off the wall things reguarding reef keeping / FOWLR etc during all your years of experence...common, be honest... what would you consider to be the DUMBEST thing (besides choosing this as a hobby :p) you have done... feel free to list more then one thing, let your peers know you might not have been this perfect all your life :D mine is listed below.
 
(this is just ONE dumb thing in the many i have done, but i will get it started :D)

when i first started SW i lost 2 Perc Clowns because i was topping off my 60gal. with Sea Water (LFS Bought)... when i lost a few fish, before i knew any better, i finally looked into the reasons since my nitri/ate's were 0 and all my readings were on the marker... i bought a refractormeter... salt levels were off the scale (1.034) i was slowly poisioning everything in the tank...but some how...EVERY INVERT SURVIVED... as well as my Sting Ray... talk about a miracle. apparently cleaners and coral bandits can withstand high salt levels for short periods of time...how the ray survived i have no clue. but during this whole process...i lost 2 clowns, 3 damsels, 1 four line / red sea wrasse (beautiful fish) :(

this is all under the direction of a LFS i once trusted...im sure they knew the outcome and just wanted me to come back for more live stock... keep in mind, this was all before i knew any beter... i saw my dad doing this when i was younger, but little did i know, that was FRESH WATER...:lol:
 
I bought an adult red sea coris wrasse to put in my 40 gal, he died within a week... Of course the LFS said it was OK to put him in there... that was strictly fish btw...
 
here is my dumbest thing I ever done: I was installing my T5 on my canopy so I removed my MH and set them on my bed. Well I finished installing the T5 and forgot about the mh. I sat down and went on RC well about 1hr later I started to smell something burning but could not find anything. Well as I sat down I again I looked over to my bed and saw the the MH were on. OH shiz I forgot to unplug them and they burned the top sheet. Good thing it did not catch on fire. That was the last time I set the lights on my bed.
 
When I started, I trusted the thermostat on a cheap petco heater.

25 snails died, which I attributed to a fresh tank / ammonia spike (wrong). 6 hermits introduced at the same time lived fine.

Added 2 green chromis - lived.

Added a sixline wrasse - dead in 12 hours.

Woke up one morning, and the tank felt cold. Ran to the store to buy a new heater - heater didn't seem to work (LED never came on). Ran to the store to buy a glass thermometer - said 92 degrees. 92 degrees, I thought, must be wrong, since the tank was cooler than the night before! Went got a lab grade digital thermometer from a chem supplier I'd used before - 92 degrees.

Kicked myself for a bit on that one. Brought temp down over the course of 12-13 hours, chromis and hermits lived despite 2+ weeks in 90+ degree water. Still feel horrible about the sixline.
 
when my 90g was a reef, it was really hot one day and I panicked and placed a large fan to blow across the top of the water. Well it brought the temp down, in about an hour or so it went from 85 to 77. Killed a ton of corals. Amazingly all the fish survived.
 
Filled my acrylic tank to the braces w/no skimmer = no O2 exchange in the tank. My mated pair of tomato clowns, six line, royal gramma, emerald crab and mandarin goby were dead by morning. My water params were good, cept for O2.

Skimmer has been added, as well as a new crew of fish. Tank has been going well for 2+ months now.
 
Accepting a store owner's assurances that a ghost eel was reefsafe. 300.00 worth of fish later, we caught him and gave him back.
Have to wonder how many times that eel [and replacement fish] had been sold.

One of the most beautiful creatures you'll ever see in motion. And the deadliest to small fishes.
 
I put Rolaids and AA batteries in my sump - thinking they would raise calcium and alkalinity!

--- kidding, LOL
 
I got my middle finger caught between Tunze magnets, ignoring all
the precautions regarding their strong attraction. I wanted to cry,
but I am a manly man. Dennis
 
My intelligence must have maxed out at the age of 6.
At the age of 7, I tossed a ping pong ball into the little cup at the county fair and won myself a goldfish, then bought a "fish bowl" at GEMCO for $1.50. Since then, I've gotten dumber every year.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8104653#post8104653 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by bruffin
I put Rolaids and AA batteries in my sump - thinking they would raise calcium and alkalinity!

--- kidding, LOL
Click to expand...

LMAO. U should have seen the look on my face!
 
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