Biggest Mistakes?

[Caveden]

This wuz near end of 2019, 5 years ago during the time I first started keeping predatory fish. Had motoro ray, silver aro, 2 bichirs and Florida gar in a 55g. You can guess it didn’t turn out well. Ray died overtime, and had to rehome the arowana. Bichirs and Florida I upgraded to my 6ft aquarium.

other mistakes I had, was from this year. I put fault on myself and have some regret. Enlisted into the army, didn’t have anymore time to take care of my fish. Only came home during the weekends, during the weekdays my family would help me to care ( they have no experience). Lost quite a few of my large bichirs. I felt terrible and wanted to just quit the hobby. That’s why I wasn’t active on this website from June - July onwards If anyone noticed. Now back in September again where I have more free time in army, I hope to come back stronger and start my collection again

 

[SilverArowanaBoi]

This wuz near end of 2019, 5 years ago during the time I first started keeping predatory fish. Had motoro ray, silver aro, 2 bichirs and Florida gar in a 55g. You can guess it didn’t turn out well. Ray died overtime, and had to rehome the arowana. Bichirs and Florida I upgraded to my 6ft aquarium.

other mistakes I had, was from this year. I put fault on myself and have some regret. Enlisted into the army, didn’t have anymore time to take care of my fish. Only came home during the weekends, during the weekdays my family would help me to care ( they have no experience). Lost quite a few of my large bichirs. I felt terrible and wanted to just quit the hobby. That’s why I wasn’t active on this website from June - July onwards If anyone noticed. Now back in September again where I have more free time in army, I hope to come back stronger and start my collection again

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Thank you for your service. Hopefully, you can build your collection back successfully!

 

[troublesum]

Back in 2005 all my coworkers had fish tanks even the owner of the company had 2 fish tanks in the office after about 2-3 months i got jealous hearing everyone talk about there fish and tanks. 1 coworker switched from freshwater to salt and asked me if i wanted the fish he gave me 2 6in Oscars 2 6in Pacus and a 20 gallon tank with a cheap filter i got home set it up put the fish in and then proceeded to threw in about a half of loaf of bread and half a head of lettuce for them to eat went to bed. believe it or not the fish lived overnight, i called in sick to work the next day got online and did research and went to Petland Discounts and ordered a 180 gallon within 6 months i had 180,125, 2 75s, 2 55s, and a few 20s.
Luckily i have never had any issues with flooding.
My biggest mistakes was selling fish that i now wish i would have kept.
my biggest regret was a LFS had a customer cancel a order and they offered me a 125 gallon acrylic with stand canopy drilled with a 40 gallon sump everything for $1700

 

[fishhead0103666]

Good thing he was swimming like a shark and not walking like a Clarius catfish lol. That would have been way worse


So the most common mistake is overfilling the tanks or forgetting to turn off the water. Are all hobbyists "destined" to make the same mistake???

If so, then i know exactly what i have to look out for!

There are 2 types of fish keepers, those who say they’ve flooded a tank before and liars lol. Everyone ends up flooding a tank sooner or later.

 

[HUKIT]

There are 2 types of fish keepers, those who say they’ve flooded a tank before and liars lol. Everyone ends up flooding a tank sooner or later.

I’ve been keeping fish for 40 years and the worst flood was 6 months ago. I was filling one of my 240’s and then started a 90 minute chess tournament while the tank overflowed for nearly the entire time. As soon the tournament ended I jumped up immediately remembering what I forgot but I walked into standing water a couple inches deep. I’ve flooded a few in the past but this one actually forced me to file a homeowners insurance claim. New hardwood floors in the fishroom, carpet in the living room, and the basement drop ceiling tiles and carpet as it poured through the bathroom heating vent flooding the room below. Easily the worst mistake I’ve made. I don’t know why I never bothered but I now have WiFi water sensors near my all the upstairs tanks. My fishroom is on tiled floor in the basement so flooding those doesn’t really harm anything.

 

[jjohnwm]

I have too many to even count. Numerous floods ranging from minor drips to floods of biblical proportions. It's why I keep virtually all my fish in the unfinished basement, so a flood is now just an inconvenience rather than a disaster.

Only a couple years back I was re-filling my storage tank in the basement, following the same procedure I have been doing for the past 10+ years, and as I opened the valve to do the fill I reached into my beer fridge...and found it empty! Horrors! So I went upstairs to grab a cold one...and passed by my wife watching some stupid show on TV...and paused...and somehow got interested...and sat down just for a moment to finish watching the segment...and then watched the next show...and by that time Duke wanted to go outside so I took him...tossed the frisbee for a bit with him...wandered over to the stocktanks and checked them out...and then it hit me!

It wasn't a disaster in an unfinished basement, but...I shudder to think if it had been upstairs.

Another time that springs to mind is when I lived in a condo in Toronto, and worked only a few blocks away. I had set up a new all-glass commercially-built 125gallon tank on the weekend, went to work on Monday, and then had to come home only a few hours later to grab some papers. I opened the door to my unit, to be faced with the terrifying aroma of damp wood. The tank was almost empty...all that water had drained onto the parquet wood floor...and then disappeared!?!?!

I hurriedly cleaned up as best I could, dreading the inevitable knock on the door from my downstairs neighbours and/or the building manager. But it never came! A couple days of blowing fans on the floor, a quick sanding job and application of Varathane, and the floor looked better than ever. That water was never heard from again. That was a poured-slab building, so for all I know there's still 100 gallons of water trapped in some hidden chamber...waiting to come gushing out when some poor maintenance man schmuck drills a hole to insert a rawl plug.

Lots of other stuff: forgetting to re-start filters or heaters after working on a tank; forgetting to turn them off in the first place and getting a shock; doing a last-minute feed on some fish using frozen krill, and then forgetting to put the package back into the freezer, to be found days later when the smell became overwhelming; rushing home after an emergency call from my wife, informing me that a large snake or lizard had just moseyed across the living room floor; learning just how high and how far some fish species can leap; the list goes on and on.

Mistakes and mis-steps are inevitable, in the hobby and in life. Some people think that you learn by doing, but that's not entirely accurate. You learn by doing wrong...and then correcting.

 

[FINWIN]

I’ve been keeping fish for 40 years and the worst flood was 6 months ago. I was filling one of my 240’s and then started a 90 minute chess tournament while the tank overflowed for nearly the entire time. As soon the tournament ended I jumped up immediately remembering what I forgot but I walked into standing water a couple inches deep. I’ve flooded a few in the past but this one actually forced me to file a homeowners insurance claim. New hardwood floors in the fishroom, carpet in the living room, and the basement drop ceiling tiles and carpet as it poured through the bathroom heating vent flooding the room below. Easily the worst mistake I’ve made. I don’t know why I never bothered but I now have WiFi water sensors near my all the upstairs tanks. My fishroom is on tiled floor in the basement so flooding those doesn’t really harm anything.

Good googa mooga

 

[fishhead0103666]

I just remembered one. Back when I was younger I was in the middle of moving various fish between tanks and had just caught a pristella tetra in a net which I set on the edge of the tank so I could quickly grab something. Right after grabbing that thing I got distracted by something on tv and ended up watching the show for about 30 minutes until I realized I still had a pristella tetra in a net outside of the water waiting for me to move it to the other tank. Surprisingly after 30 minutes of being out of the water it acted as if nothing had happened, just went about its business. That individual pristella tetra was one of the toughest fish I’ve ever met, it could probably have grown legs and evolved infront of my own eyes if it wanted to.

 

[tlindsey]

Mistakes
Cooked my group of juvenile Redbelly Piranha set the heater to high.
Put a Picasso Trigger in a aquarium with a bamboo shark and shark pup lost a eye.
Put a figure eight puffer in a aquarium with my mother's african snakehead. Snakehead and puffer both died.
My mother-in-law was very religious and was afraid and hated snakes. I believed she poured bleach in my brackish water moray eel aquarium. I should have kept it in my basement.
Put small juvenile Senegal bichir in my 180gal with larger bichir and one of them ate them. No trace of the bodies.
Killed tridacna clam and corals because didn't know they had to be fed food. All of these events occurred without internet or proper resources.

 

[duanes]

Nitrate is toxic.
Not as acutley toxic as ammonia, and nitrite, but nitrate is toxic.
I started keeping fish in the late 1950s. yet it took me until the 1990 to realize this.
And I consider it my most egregious oversite/and mistake, believing the propaganda that nitratee in aquariums are benign.

The realization came, when I started working at a drinking water filtration plant in 1990 as a chemist and found none of the water we took in, ever contained a nitrate level on, or above 1 ppm.
Since then, I have tested nonpolluted waters from Lake Michigan to Panama, and found where healthy fish are present, no nitrates are detected.