What’s the most boneheaded thing you’ve done?

[vcnt]

I would prob say i made a buckeg of saltwater and had to make three more cause i took out too much water, took me an extra 2 hours to water change, but it was my first time. I will probably have something much stupider to say in the upcoming months

 

[revhtree]

There are not enough characters allowed in this response box for me to list them all! Ha!

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Build a tank stand upside down
Dose nitrates to over 100 in my tank
Flood my bathroom by not turning my RODI off

 

[Sophie"s mom]

My wife often points out my most boneheaded action ever: I was 17, clearing grass from a gas lawnmower with it running. I was surprised a finger could actually slow it down.

Let’s collect all of the wonderfully obtuse things we’ve done as a reefing community.


I’ll start with a few of my most favorite recent ones:

- Neptune Apex being used for auto water change, figured it’s the Ronco of controllers, so I set it and forgot it. I kept seeing my sump level increase after it ran and I always said to myself “huh, that’s odd. Wonder why.” But … I never checked until this weekend, going on 5 months of being … me. I had set it up to run in the “add” direction but the system automatically sets it up to reverse the pump direction. So for MONTHS I was adding 1.5 gallons of mix SW daily and wondering why things kept drifting. Fixed it, hooray for me!!

- setup the auto top-off system with the RO/DI refilling it (time was ~10:30pm) and said to myself … “man I’m tired, let’s turn the water off and go to bed.” Well, I know I flipped the switch … but what I didn’t realize was that I turned it ON!! I hadn’t been refilling the reservoir at all, until I went to bed. Woke up at 5:20am to the Apex flood sensor warning. That was a fun wake up.


Let’s hear those fun stories!

I was in a hurry one day ,headed out the door, but needed to top my tank off ( didn't have an ATO yet) So I grabbed the pitcher I use and filled it with TAP WATER instead of RO water, but I luckily caught myself just as I went to dump it in the tank.

 

[Dburr1014]

My wife often points out my most boneheaded action ever: I was 17, clearing grass from a gas lawnmower with it running. I was surprised a finger could actually slow it down.

My neighbor lost a finger that way.
You got lucky, I hope.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

This wasn’t catastrophic, just bone headed.
Did a routine WC. Siphoned water out , had to stop between draining and filling to grab something I forgot, came back and refilled the tank with the water I had just siphoned out.

I have almost done this before

 

[BrokenReefer]

One common thread here is …. We all collectively suck at keeping floors dry.

Thankfully, or not, my basement has tiled flooring so the water just kinda seeps through the grout and becomes out of sight out of mind. Not so good is my wife is now convinced that the tile is “buckling” even though I hav assured her that is not physically possible. I guess me dumping water on the floor more than once has jaded her to my “expertise”. Lol

 

[GARRIGA]

Listen to the internet

 

[PharmrJohn]

Build a tank stand upside down

Oh God, I'm still laughing!!!!

 

[Homestarmy]

Well, just yesterday I tried to burn my house down by leaving my heaters and a pump I had in my (dry) saltwater barrel plugged into a timer that I thought I had turned off by using a kill switch that only turned the power off temporarily. The timer turned on at 9:00am yesterday morning and I received the text from my wife by 9:20 yelling at me about the noxious odors coming from the basement.

Not that I haven't heard that complaint before....

 

[quesomuchacho]

Thought a big Brute on wheels would be a super easy way to move 30G saltwater mix from my rodi/mixing area to my tank in the living room. 1st time doing it I got it rolled to the family room just fine, but it turns out those things aren’t that stable. Bumped it. The wheels went one way and the Brute the other. I tried to catch it, but 30G saltwater pwned me and I woke up my sick wife and newborn with shouts of “earmuff” words. It took every towel in the house (plus a few blankets) and moving around all the furniture…but hey, the family room got a good deep cleaning.

 

[exnisstech]

I got into reefing thinking it would be a safe relaxing hobby So far I've flooded the house, almost burned it down overflowing a tank onto a power strip, and I fell off a chair when I stuck my hand in a tank that had 50 volts from leaking powerheads. Wonder what tomorrow will bring lol

 

[Sdbuehler1]

For me it’s dumping in the full dosage of any chemical based on the manufactures instructions instead of playing it safe and doing a half or quarter to see how my tanks reacts - i.e. I did the recommended dosage.. why did my phosphates drop to 0 lol.

 

[Peter Houde]

First biggest blunder: Not listening to my wife when she warned me 30 years ago to not look at the salt water fish.
Second biggest blunder: Not sealing the new hardwood floor before setting up the 125g.

 

[Sdbuehler1]

Well, just yesterday I tried to burn my house down by leaving my heaters and a pump I had in my (dry) saltwater barrel plugged into a timer that I thought I had turned off by using a kill switch that only turned the power off temporarily. The timer turned on at 9:00am yesterday morning and I received the text from my wife by 9:20 yelling at me about the noxious odors coming from the basement.

Not that I haven't heard that complaint before....

I made a similar mistake when I forgot to monitor the water level in my mixing tank. The heater is supposed to shut off when it’s out of water but it did not and I had a small Chernobyl incident in my basement as well.

 

[Reefer Matt]

Putting 3500 lbs of water and tanks on a floating cork floor.

 

[DanP-SD]

About 25 years ago, i was working on my first reef tank in the first house my wife and I had just bought. I had a 55 gallon trash can in the family room mixing up a batch of SW with a power head and decided to run to Home Depot. Returned to water across the entire downstairs. Seems the power head twisted its own cord and pulled the can over. Called ServPro who determined water had crept up to about 30 inches of drywall above the floor so we ripped out all flooring, three feet of drywall and insulation throughout the entire brand new house. Fortunately insurance covered most of the work but it wasn’t a fun few weeks. Have had 8 successively larger reefs since then.

 

[CKW]

Tried to move a full tank by myself

 

[ChrisfromBrick]

forgetting to turn off my ato while doing a water change.

 

[dakoop]

Most bonehead thing I've ever did was saying I do