ADMIT IT: What is the most insane, craziest thing you have ever done in the hobby?

[Christopher Peters]

Given advice about something I didn't fully understand.

 

[rcillig]

Haha, these are great, you all got to admit even after flooding or breaking something like we all have done. You just sit back and smile at what ever bone head thing you just did all because we love the hobby.

 

[Finn S.]

On my first reef tank (10 gallon, had no idea what I was doing) I tried to combat cyano by dumping an entire bottle of nitrifying bacteria into the tank. The next morning, the water was as cloudy as Mt Olympus and my first skunk shrimp had suffocated

 

[Acan_Fan]

I started with a 40b and a deep sand bed. And all I had was an aquaclear HOB filter... and wondered why I had algae blooms and diatoms with 8 fish... mainly because I was new, but also because I thought my LFS was giving me solid advice. Then I joined reef2reef. Now I am upgrading to a 75rr, with a sump and the right equipment to get started properly. I think it is horrible practice for an LFS to say "aptasia arent bad, they don't really spread that much. Natural part of your reef" then I find out they sell Aptasia X and F Aptasia... mind blown!

 

[Manic Newbie]

We do things sometimes that we're not exactly proud of and sometimes pretty embarrassing! But they sure can help others in the future and help prevent them from making the same mistakes. So don't be embarrassed and don't be afraid to let it all out!

What is the most insane, craziest thing you have ever done in the hobby?

My first saltwater tank hasn’t even cycled yet, so I suppose the most insane crazy thing I’ve done so far is deciding that getting into this hobby is a good idea and that this is what I want to do with any extra time and money I have.

 

[Murica]

Long story short, 50 gallons in a Rubbermaid bucket on casters. Casters broke, so 50 gallons now in my basement, ventilation, practically destroys my wife’s wedding dress, destroyed all the basement’s drop ceiling, etc etc

 

[jacobreynolds6883]

Crazy mistake that cost me a fish, I vodka dose on a daily basis on my main tank. I decided to start vodka dosing on my wife's 5g nano tank to help with nutrient control. Everything was going great and one day I was to lazy to slide back the top cover exposing the built in sump and instead dropped vodka straight into the display. This activated the only fish in there that decided to swim into the vodka before it spread. The next morning it had died for the exposure, I was sad and mad at myself for the silly mistake.

 

[siggy]

Cut the sock chamber out of my sump and installed a chaeto fuge even tho I had low nutrients and didn't need a fuge ;Blackeye its now in a land fill near you. There I said it.

 

[C. Eymann]

Kept a potentially medically significant fish eating cone snail in a critter keeper submerged in a sump for a few months.

Looking back, pretty dumb of me considering the possible lethal consequences if I got tagged by it.

 

[Jamesnorwood860]

Lol I just recently started fragging a soso colony so she sees I make frags and tell her they are to trade for other ones. So now I either throw away a head of fire and ice or give it to the random person I am buying the expensive frag from.

Send it to me haga

 

[Lasse]

Where to begin -

The worst is maybe a couple of years ago. The new GHL app for cellphones had been released. I had installed it. I was alone home for a couple of days and was in the store to catch up a package with aquarium equipment I had ordered.
Found a bag of roasted nuts for a good price (I´m not allowed to eat nuts because it will give me a high risk to get an ileus)
Get home - hungry - but there is a bag of roasted nuts (I´m not allowed to eat nuts because it will give me a high risk to get an ileus)
Eat the nuts (not remember that I´m not allowed to eat nuts because it will give me a high risk to get an ileus)
Looking at TV in the evening - eating some vegetarian food my wife had prepared for me.
Get pain in the stomach
Dam the vegetarian food
Still pain in the stomach
Go to bed - pass the kitchen sink - a empty bag of roasted nuts? - dam the vegetarian food
Try to sleep - more pain in the stomach - must be the vegetarian food - I haven´t eat anything else beside a bag of roasted nuts ( I´m not allowed to eat nuts because it will give me a high risk to get an ileus) what........ Have I eat nuts - but I´m not allowed to do that........
More pain 05:00 in the morning
Grab the phone call my pal that I know is going to his job at this time
Can you pass the hospital and let me off there? Yes
At the hospital
Calling my wife - she have to come home
Stomach surgery - 10 hours - it was ileus - and not caused by the vegetarian food at all - but they found a bag of roasted nut that block the intestine.......
Next day - new surgery - but short - only 2 hours - it was a reclaim of the one the day before.
Leaving the ICU the night after this for a recovering room at the hospital
Could not sleep of some reason - even if the morphine pump was working good
Remember - I got a new GHL app - lets play with that an see how my dosing of CORE 7 works. It works well
Fall asleep
Wake up - wondering if the app still works - what - pH is 9.5 !!!! Whats happen - the clock is 05:00 in the morning. My wife must check this - I phone her - she was glad to here that it was me on the phone and not a doctor or a priest - but get angry when I asked to get up and looks if the dosing pump still was dosing. What in heck is a dosing pump she said - try to explain that when you are high on morphine - its not so easy
I succeeded to explain but I will not give you the exact words that pass my phone during that event - on reason I do nor remember and if I remember it would be a lot of xxxxx in this text
Let us say - I did not use the app again before I was free of the morphine dosing but I try to convince my doctor that I need to take all of the connected equipment with me and get home to see how my reef was going. She did not let me do that....
And that was good - when I return home after 2 weeks - my reef was excellent - looking better than ever.

Lesson learn - do not play with your GHL app when you are high on morphine and try to remember that you are not allowed to eat nuts even if no one see you

But I just love nuts....... my wife too but of some reasons - she always hide them.....

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Twitchy]

Two things come to mind when I was younger.... First never leave your 3 year old sister unattended with your new 3 gallon hex tank... the contents were all over the floor, she decided she wanted to "pet the fishies"... the one who made it was never quite right after that.
The other time that comes to mind, we went up to visit family, they had an old tank out in the barn... one of those 70's era 10 gallon tanks with the chrome frame, I asked if I could have it... I took it home, and put that thing right on my desk, filling it with water.... by the time I got all the water quickly scooped back out of the tank my desk and floor was soaked. I don't think my parents ever got the deposit back on that apartment...

 

[Reefnman2]

Ill call it my biggest DUH moment. First reef, first ATO. Decided to do a 20% water change...without unplugging ATO. Im sure you can figure the rest. Included minor heart attack haha. We dont do that anymore

lol Been there done that!

 

[Reefnman2]

I had a fowlr tank with a dsb and when I decided to go into reefing I decided to take out about 2 in. of sand well while removing the sand I found a metal serving spoon, a small drinking glass that neither my wife and I remember even owning, a nickle and a 1oz. lead bullet weight for fishing...I have no clue but I blamed our cats.

 

[DibsOnMcRibs]

I think getting into this hobby is the craziest thing i’ve ever done.

 

[madweazl]

I've made more mistakes than I could count or post but it has ultimately led me to where I am now as a reefer. Craziest was probably my first tank; a 55g aggressive that had a green wolf eel, snowflake eel, lion, miniatus grouper, soap fish, clown trigger, huma trigger, and a niger trigger. All the fish were small so there wasnt any fighting. All was well until I added a majestic angel; less than two days later, everything was dead. It was rough, I had picked up the clown trigger when it was the size of a dime and didnt expect it to live but it had done great and was about 3" at the time of death.

 

[Jase4224]

When the stand on my 300gal (still living with my parents at the time) started to take up water from a leak I quickly plumbed four 50gal tubs together to put my fish and corals in whilst I had a new steel stand built.. get home from work one day to find a FLOOD on the carpet of my parents dining room... blue linkia starfish decided to stuff one of its legs into the drain
(•_•)<{****}

To make thing worse my LFS was so bad I drove my fish and corals 4 hours away to another store for credit for a smaller tank.

 

[Terry Mattson]

I decided to grow my own phytoplankton and copods. So I purchased the Poseidon reef system. First batch perfect. Now time to harvest. Had everything I needed and even put on gloves. Followed directions perfectly and then ..... all the copods in the second batch, dead. And phytoplankton turned yellow and then dead. Instead using 1.026 saltwater, I mistakenly used rodi water ..... crap. During the autopsy my specific gravity was 1.013. At least I found root cause.... me

 

[jomatty]

Ill call it my biggest DUH moment. First reef, first ATO. Decided to do a 20% water change...without unplugging ATO. Im sure you can figure the rest. Included minor heart attack haha. We dont do that anymore

I’ve done that while using kalk in the ato...good times

 

[ca1ore]

I’ve done my fair share of regrettable things, but I’d not characterize them as crazy, just foolish. Tried building my own plywood tank back in 1994 .... well before I really knew what I was doing .... so perhaps that was a crazy thing to do. Predictably it leaked. Subsequent efforts have been much more successful.