Bad luck or Silly things

Silly Things You Have Done Or Just Pure Bad Luck.


Well that's the heading , pretty much it is a tell all about the most stupid thing or bad luck you have had while keeping fish "it can be anything fish related.

Number 1 "stupid"
Ok dumbest thing i did was when i had a 3 foot tank freshwater,i think i might have been 10 or 12 years old , i was doing a water change on my tank.Because the light was a tad longer than the tank , i use to leave it sitting on top and turned on so i could see what i was doing , there i was using my gravel cleaner when all of a sudden there was this huge blue flash ,yep you guess it , the light had fallen into the water and kill all my fish and plants


Number 2 "a tad smarter ,but failed"
Yep some times i am a slow learner , when i was 14 mind you a little older and only a tad wiser
I was doing the same thing , water change and cleaning the gravel with a gravel cleaner "this time the light was sitting on the tank but turned off " Yep all of a sudden the cat jumped onto the tank "no cover glass this time" and fell into the tank , the cat got out but as it did the light fell into the tank and again another blue flash every thing was toast .
Like i said a a tad wiser "i turned off the light at the switch on the light not at the outlet it plugs into ."

Numer 3 "totally unlucky"
16 years old now
Changing my 3 footer to my 4 footer what an exciting day it was for me
i had planned it all to perfection Well i thought i did anyway .
I collected the fish and plants out of my 3 foot tank , and placed them into 3 styrofoam boxes,and put them in the drive way .Well i moved the 3 footer outside , then got the 4 footer into position , put the gravel in it , then heard a tire screech , now no person ever used our drive way at home ,But i walked outside to see my stupid sister and her mate ,saying we did not see them , we did not see them , well as you can guess , they ran over the boxes all 3 of them till they worked out they had hit some thing in the car . So there i was catching fish on hot concrete . I saved a few but lost a lot



Anyone else ?

LOL wow, yeah thats alot of bad luck... good thing your hands wernt in the tank water when the light fell in!!

The gravel cleaner Keith was a home made one lucky it was taller than the tank

Honestly Keith ,if you think about it everyone has done some thing silly ! once or twice .

I was chatting to my Dad today , thats what made me post this , as i was telling him about when the nem stuffed up my tank a month ago, he started laughing and bringing up things many years ago !

LOL i took the smile off his face when i mentioned , the 8 footer. It burst and flooded our house ! Even after the 3 day outside test !

ooh no fun there......


yeah i had one bad luck incident with my last tank, but i am to lazy right now (and working on 6 things at once) to bother typing it all up

Oh, I've got some major ones.....

I'll write up a little later.

Cool

LOL I am with the other two slackers, I have stories but am too tired to write them up now, I will get them up later.

Ok, here's one from my days at the Denver Aquarium. This happened on their big stingray touch tank. Myself and another guy were told to replace a pump on one of the sand filters. This sand filter had been off for quite a while and unknown to us, had gone extremely anaerobic. Well, feeling smug that we got the pump in and running without any problems, we walked out to look at the tank. First the air started smelling like sewage, then about 10 minutes later the stingrays started acting up. Flapping at the surface, leaping from the water, floating upside down, it looked grim. This happened in the middle of the night, so I called all the managers to tell them to get there as fast as possible. I took as many SCUBA tanks as I could, opened them up and dunked them in the tank to drive off the hydrogen sulfide. Then when others arrived, we started moving all of them to other exhibits, no time for quarantine.

Found out later, that the stingrays had a reaction to the hydrogen sulfide that induced them to expel their bowel movements from both ends. This shot the ammonia level up to 24.0 mg/L !!! It's a miracle any of them survived. Altogether about half of the rays died, 11 that night, 2 later on. The whole tank needed to be re-cycled and the damage was in the thousands.


I felt really horrible after that and used it as a powerful lesson to never underestimate the power of hydrogen sulfide.

WOW that is a heck of a story,did you get suspended or anything? Anyway that makes me feel a little better about my jawfish thanks spiney

I think the dumbest thing i did recently was was to clean my newly mesh modded skimmer empellors in water and muriatic acid . I put the empellors in a dish and covered them with water and took it outside. I then poured a splash of acid in the dish and went inside. Came back an hour or so later and everything was one black mass of plastic.

I forgot that when you add muriatic acid and water it creates a lot of heat and it melted the mesh and the covering on the magnets. I should have mixed the water and acid and let it sit for a while first. Then i had to explain to Barb why we needed 3 new empellors at $45 each

Ouch!!!!!!!!!!!!

Originally Posted by Thinkin Reef

Silly Things You Have Done Or Just Pure Bad Luck.


Well that's the heading , pretty much it is a tell all about the most stupid thing or bad luck you have had while keeping fish "it can be anything fish related.

Number 1 "stupid" ...
Number 2 "a tad smarter ,but failed" ...
Numer 3 "totally unlucky" ...

Anyone else ?

it's good that you can laugh about it all now isn't it?! You are soooooo right though...we've all done stupid things AND had bad luck when it comes to our tanks! I really only was totally hands-on with my/our first tank...a 29g saltwater...I'm sure I did a bunch of dumb stuff and had bad luck but need to think about it...when we moved and upgraded to the 180g and 75g chris took over it all and also kept a lot of things from me so I can't comment too much on that...though I'm sure I can think of a few things ... I'll get back to this when I have the stories!

Originally Posted by spinycheek

Ok, here's one from my days at the Denver Aquarium. This happened on their big stingray touch tank. Myself and another guy were told to replace a pump on one of the sand filters....

I felt really horrible after that and used it as a powerful lesson to never underestimate the power of hydrogen sulfide.

Yikes! seems like most of all learn hard lessons in this hobby don't we?

Originally Posted by chris&barb

I think the dumbest thing i did recently was was to clean my newly mesh modded skimmer empellors in water and muriatic acid . I put the empellors in a dish and covered them with water and took it outside. I then poured a splash of acid in the dish and went inside. Came back an hour or so later and everything was one black mass of plastic.

I forgot that when you add muriatic acid and water it creates a lot of heat and it melted the mesh and the covering on the magnets. I should have mixed the water and acid and let it sit for a while first. Then i had to explain to Barb why we needed 3 new empellors at $45 each

ummm...hon...?! I uh don't recall this incident

Oooh, I would've forgot about the heat from adding acid!


I didn't get suspended from that, my managers got written up. Although I got "let go" a few weeks later for an unrelated incident. That'll be my next story.

ummm...hon...?! I uh don't recall this incident

It was about 2 years ago

yeah...conveniently 2 years ago...uh huh....

OK...here we go for my first run...

Stupid:
Allowing my big beautiful LTA stay situated directly under the pump you would think after the 1st time getting caught up in it and thinking he was a gonner that we'd force move it away wouldn't you? but no........we wanted it to be "happy" so we kept it there...and after the 3rd time of being sucked up by the pump it was done

Stupid...or was it really bad luck?
Crushed coral as substrate ... being brand new to saltwater tanks we took the advice of one of our lfs and placed 5-6 inches of crushed coral as our substrate...now we did do a lot of research - books and online - and followed the "experts" advice at the time...and the anemones ( 1 lta and 1 carpet) loved it, and so did our jawfish...it was ultimately the downfall of our 1st tank set up of the 180g...the "experts" fail to tell you that after a year, the substrate under the rocks, and the substrate that you can't clean/siphon/move around will turn to cement ... and that 5-6 inches of any substrate will collect a ton of debris that only recycles back into your tank ... so I think you guys get the picture!!! eventually dead corals, sickly fish and nearly impossible clean up!

I know I have more but also have other posts to get to will come back with even more horror stories!

Ok here is my biggest stupid mistake.

I was moving, I had a 72g bowfront that was loaded with corals and fish. I got the bright idea to just go get a 29g bow and move everything to it in the new house. It worked great but in a hurry I built a home made stand. I got everything moved and then re set up the 72g and got it cycling. One night at 1 am I was woke up to the sound of breaking glass and a water fall. My wife was too, that was fun.

We run out in the living room to find the 29g broken in half right down the middle. It seems that my home made stand wasn't enough to hold it and it let go. We put all the corals in a 5g bucket just stacked in there and cleaned up the mess. In the morning I had to pull up the carpet, and get heaters and fans going. I also found that the 5g bucket of corals got too cold and everything died except a few Zoa frags.

Yeah that was a fun one.

OMG ... that's a horror alright! and your wife stuck by even after that? you got a real winner there with Shellie that's for sure!

Hate it when half-assing something comes back to ruin your day. That's one of my biggest fears, having a tank break. I live in an apartment, so everyone below would have their stuff ruined too.

Yep it sucks for sure.