The "Oh Crap" moments

Tried starting a siphon by mouth and got nasty fish water in my mouth...

I used to have an old school glass heater. I took it out of the tank to do something and forgot to put it back in. It overheated and blew up, and light on fire. Scorched the back of the tank and melted the frame (tank didn't burst, thankfully), and burned the wall pretty good. Woops.

Melted a power strip once because I accidentally dumped a bunch of water on it.

Tipped over a 35g trash can of mixing salt water

Bought a SeaClone.

Thought ZooMed t-5s were good light fixtures.

The list goes on. lol.
 
89Foxbody said:
Tried starting a siphon by mouth and got nasty fish water in my mouth...

I used to have an old school glass heater. I took it out of the tank to do something and forgot to put it back in. It overheated and blew up, and light on fire. Scorched the back of the tank and melted the frame (tank didn't burst, thankfully), and burned the wall pretty good. Woops.

Melted a power strip once because I accidentally dumped a bunch of water on it.

Tipped over a 35g trash can of mixing salt water

Bought a SeaClone.

Thought ZooMed t-5s were good light fixtures.

The list goes on. lol.
Click to expand...
This actually made me lol.
 
I was installing a brand new 48 inch Photon light fixture from Reef Breeders when it slipped out of my hands and fell in the new 120g tank I was working on. Yes, it was full of saltwater. At the time I had pinched Ulnar nerves in both elbows which caused a lost of feeling in my hands. I have since had surgery on both elbows. Despite rinsing and drying of the fixture it lasted about 5 days and needed to be replaced.
 
Got siphon water in my mouth

Clobbered a torch and skipped the iodine on the chance that brown jelly wouldn't set it
Ignored the white fuzz on the chance that it wouldn't turn out to be brown jelly
Took a big ol sniff of what was left of the torch after the brown jelly :(

Made a little tweak to the overflow and forgot to put a siphon break on the new pipe, shut off pump - flood

Walking out the door to a party, decided to make a little tweak to the overflow. Figured I could do it with the pump on. Direct hit to the face, drenched head to toe. Stilettos still smell like low tide.

Forgot to add Prime to the tap water after I rinsed my filter sock. Twice.

... That was just this week

ETA I tripped and spilled some water in the just the wrong direction, blew up an extension cord. forgot about that
 
Last edited:
Just remembered, I dropped my Reef Keeper Elite head unit into a 5 gallon bucket of water. That was my most expensive mistake. The worst part is that EVERYTHING still worked on the damn thing EXCEPT the clock...the most important function.

Sometimes my own foolishness makes me scratch my head.
 
I was taking down a brand new 800 dollar led light because it had a buzzing sound. I wanted to send it back to be replaced. Of course it slipped and dunked an end of it in the tank. Warranty doesn't cover water damage. Doh!
 
Oh Crap Moment: Your 6 year old wakes you up with, "Don't worry, Daddy. I already fed the fish".
 
This thread is so full of laughs and memories, haha. I am pretty sure that I have done nearly every one of these too... except the stilettos...

I love the comments about a mouth full of seawater from starting a siphon. Every time I have done that (And it has been many times), I always go through that dreaded moment of where I know I can not swallow it and I can not spit it into the tank, so I have to run through the house looking for the nearest spot that I can spit and not damage anything, lol. Good times.
 
Hearing the voice of your 5 year old: "Dad, where's the other clown fish?"

Spend about 15 minutes searching only to find possible evidence of fish remnants

Having to explain the cycle of life to a 5 year old and "who" did it in the tank....
 
Here is one that almost caused the loss of a hand.

I was scraping corralline off the side of the tank and the scraper skipped out (it was a pretty thick chunk of corralline) I was pushing down pretty hard and my fist kept moving with the scraper in a downward motion. My fist then punched a large colony of frogspawn, so hard I could hear the skeleton crunch. I pulled my hand out and everything looked ok. No blood etc. I washed my hand with soap for good measure and then started working on supper. I was cooking with jalapenos and began to notice that all my fingers were burning at the fingertips. I thought that I had small cuts and the juice from the jalapeno was causing a reaction. I ate supper had an IPA and went on my merry way.

The next AM I woke up and my hand had swelled up very very large and was very painful. On one of my knuckles was a small white mark and the rest of the hand was progressively getting red. I had a rollout I needed to complete for work so I headed in and toughed out the pain. By the end of day I was in excruciating pain and there were now red lines moving up my arm. I called one of my reefer buddies whose wife happens to be a doctor. I explained to him what happened. His wife got on the phone gave me a prescription for antibiotics and said get this filled now or you are losing your hand. Rather scary.

What's more pathetic is over a year later I somehow managed to hit that same frogspawn colony and the same thing happened. This time I went to the walk in at the clinic and then had to proceed to explain how I had an infection from coral and how I was able to get this in Wisconsin in the middle of Winter.....
 
And one more. I have a kegerator in my basement that was full of IPA from a local microbrewery. The tank lives in the basement too, so it is very convenient to tap a beer and sit in front of the tank and relax.

Well one night one of my buddies tapped a beer at the end of the night and went outside where we were hanging out, after that beer we all headed to bed.

The next AM I woke up to the smell of beer wafting through the house. My friend did not close the tap all the way so an almost entire 1/2 barrel of a kick *** IPA drained onto my basement floor. Well two days later my tank was full of white snot looking white strands everywhere and my drain filters were full of the same snot like stuff and overflowing like crazy. I would replace them and immediately the clean ones would fill up.

Turns out the evaporating alcohol in the air was doing a major carbon dose on my tank I was getting the side affect of an overdose that I had seen when dosing vodka.... Nothing was harmed except for my pride :) and pocketbook from an almost full barrel of a really really good IPA.
 
Jason S said:
I love the comments about a mouth full of seawater from starting a siphon. Every time I have done that (And it has been many times), I always go through that dreaded moment of where I know I can not swallow it and I can not spit it into the tank, so I have to run through the house looking for the nearest spot that I can spit and not damage anything, lol. Good times.
Click to expand...

:lol: same here. siphon water in mouth comments make me laugh out loud. i don't know why :D
 
Got a bad bottle of refractometer calibration fluid once, lost alot of my favorite little guys and pulled out some hair trying to figure out what the hell was wrong.

I think the loudest ive ever yelled something similar to "oh crap" was the dinoflagellate battle I had over the past month when id turn on the lights in the morning, think they finally succumbed to one of my eradication methods, then came back 5 minutes later to find them completely regenerated and covering everything.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

C
Hydros awc experts
Replies
15
Views
164
wvned
wvned
oceangopher
Tankpocalypse Now
Replies
2
Views
189
Reefing102
Reefing102
C
RODI problem
Replies
15
Views
204
griss
griss
C
Hydros w/sump
Replies
3
Views
171
wvned
wvned
R
some random questions
Replies
1
Views
235
SantaMonica
S
Back
Top