What's the dumbest thing you've ever done with your tank?

[+Mlaw]

Title says it all. I want to hear stories of stupidity. That way I'll feel better about some of the stuff I've done.

I'll start. I used cheap LED panels from China in a tank enclosed in a wall. They weren't water proof and water was splashed on them. They flickered on and off for a day or so and instead of unplugging and dealing with it I left it alone. They eventually shorted and caught fire. I got to spray a fire extinguisher into the tank to deal with it.

Next.

[KevinB]

Adding a decorator crab. Luckily I decided to remove it before it spread Kenya trees all over the place

[sifuentes31]

I hooked up my ATO and was excited to finally get set up so that i wouldn't have to manually pour the water in. I left for lunch with my wife and came to find 5 Gallons of water on the floor. Stupid me forgot to put the hose in the sump. Just had it laying on the floor. Doh!

[+Capt. Obvious]

I closed my stand door with a bottle in it...sending the bottle through the side of my sump (shattering the side)

I forgot to re-secure my ATO line...which sprayed water all over my Vortech controller

...used a skilter

[Planeden]

jesus. i was going to add something, but i do not believe i can compete with that. sorry.

[jestep]

External skimmer container that wasn't sealed and was lower than the skimmer cup. Dumped a good 3 or 4 gallons out of my tank, subsequently put 3 or 4 gallons of RO water in via ATO.

Completely ruined the stand and nearly ruined a UPS battery sitting next to the sump. Not to mention lowered my salinity by 10% in about 15 minutes.

Other dumbest thing was when I had a heater fully shorted in the tank. I never noticed except a slight tingle as I was always wearing shoes on the carpet so I didn't provide a path to ground. I upgraded to a grounded metal fixture, and grounded my self on the fixture, shoulder deep in the tank. No GFCI on that outlet in my dining room. Ouch...

[+Capt. Obvious]

External skimmer container that wasn't sealed and was lower than the skimmer cup. Dumped a good 3 or 4 gallons out of my tank, subsequently put 3 or 4 gallons of RO water in via ATO.

Completely ruined the stand and nearly ruined a UPS battery sitting next to the sump. Not to mention lowered my salinity by 10% in about 15 minutes.

Other dumbest thing was when I had a heater fully shorted in the tank. I never noticed except a slight tingle as I was always wearing shoes on the carpet so I didn't provide a path to ground. I upgraded to a grounded metal fixture, and grounded my self on the fixture, shoulder deep in the tank. No GFCI on that outlet in my dining room. Ouch...

note to self: order that grounding probe you have been putting off...

[+Mlaw]

having felt that zap and lost fish to it I second getting a grounding probe.

[Juiceman]

I was feeling some current through the tank. Ended up being a bad 3 to 2 prong adapter that was bad. Didn't know until I organized my wired and found a melted adapter in the mist of my cluttered wires.

[+Capt. Obvious]

having felt that zap and lost fish to it I second getting a grounding probe.

I have a atman ph2500 in a bucket that will let someone experience this if they have yet to feel it...FREE

[BBMarlin]

Had my 2 part solution mounted on a shelf above my sump and had the lines going through the dosing pump down into my sump. Dumped 1/2 gallon of alk and calc into my tank via a siphon before I caught it.

[kingjames]

when i was a newb about five years ago, when i was introducing fish in my newly cycled tank that had plans on being a full reef tank, my fish started getting ich and what do i do, in a panic i start dosing copper until three days later i found out that s*** will attach to rocks, silicone and anything porous, well lets just say i could not keep inverts, or coral for over a year and a half after tank was set up, i almost left the hobby until some people started giving me solutions on how to get it all out, now im loving my tank other then my recent mistake,

[+boognish]

I bought a nice 7" x 4" multi-colony zoa rock from another member. I always dip zoas in a light solution of H2O2 for algae, etc. I got some tank water in a tupperware, dropped the rock in, and went to the closet and grabbed the Hydrogen Peroxide bottle. I slowly started pouring some into the tupperware with the rock. Suddenly I realized the smell I recognized was not H2O2. My daughter is a swimmer and gets swimmers ear. I had mixed up a 50% H2O2 and Isopropyl Alcohol solution for swimmers ear prevention and kept it in an unlabeled H2O2 bottle. I immediately remembered thinking "I should label this before I use it as H2O2...." The zoas were fine after a RO/DI and saltwater rinse. No algae or sober bugs. "Go home zoas, you're drunk"

I'm sure I've done something more stupid and it hasn't presented itself yet. Might be the melting of my braces with 3 x 400w MHs in my hood. We'll see...

[George Monnat Jr]

#1 This

#2 This

#3 I spent several weeks setting up my tank for a week-long vacation about a month ago. Then just before leaving I added salt and baking soda within an hour of each other. That caused a huge snowstorm which caused alkalinity, calcium and magnesium to all plummet. I had to start over in a rush.

#4 While I was on that vacation I thought the daily auto feeder with spirulina flakes and meaty pellets would be plenty, but my Powder Brown Tang was recovering from ich (doing better each day). Without the garlic and nori, I think the parasites sucked into starvation. It was dead when I got home. The scavengers hadn't gotten to it, so I think it had dies only a few hours before I got home.

[mFrame]

I told my wife how much the new tank actually costed...

[victoly]

Blue. Clove. Polyps.

[bige]

Xenia!

[victoly]

I told my wife how much the new tank actually costed...

/thread

[+Dustin Blevins]

Haven't set it up yet...

[+Capt. Obvious]

I told my wife how much the new tank actually costed...

You violated the first rule of reef keeping: Cost shall never be discussed with one's spouse

[Bpb]

Telling the wife actual costs probably takes the cake on this thread. But I'll play.

Luckily I've asked a million questions and have managed to avoid most major pests and haven't had any major deaths or water quality issues. But the dumbest thing I've done so far...

Doing a major tank cleaning one day. Scraping out the sump. Vinegar bath of all pumps and powerheads and skimmer. Big sand vaccum. A good three hour session id say. Part of the process was swapping out my U tube in my overflow box. I have several and I rotate them to keep them cleaned and non clogged with algae and such. Well. I put the tank back together, and filled my sump with new saltwater, and fired it up. Walked away. Came back to a mild flood in the living room. I forgot to replace the u tube. Tank overflowed about 10 gallons of saltwater which managed to overflow right into the power strips no less. Luckily and miraculously nothing shorted, no fire, no damage and no stink. I cleaned it up real quick and made sure not to tell my wife. Immediately purchased a gfci outlet as a result. I've already been struck by lightening once (literally) so I don't want to press my luck

[Timfish]

It is my constitutional right not to say any thing that may incriminate me.

[jestep]

Here's my position on that topic: http://www.austinreefclub.com/topic/20004-sneaking-purchases/

[Planeden]

Here's my position on that topic: http://www.austinreefclub.com/topic/20004-sneaking-purchases/

"Fortunately, our wives typically don’t take as much an interest in our

aquariums as we do, so they may never notice anything new. However, some

spouses are a bit more involved and might start asking questions when

they see something they don’t recall seeing before. Here’s where the

creative talking comes in. Just say that the fish has been in there for

months and that you haven’t spent any money on the tank for quite a

while."

i think my girlfriend does this with shoes.

[Planeden]

Telling the wife actual costs probably takes the cake on this thread. But I'll play.

Luckily I've asked a million questions and have managed to avoid most major pests and haven't had any major deaths or water quality issues. But the dumbest thing I've done so far...

Tank overflowed about 10 gallons of saltwater which managed to overflow right into the power strips no less. Luckily and miraculously nothing shorted, no fire, no damage and no stink. I cleaned it up real quick and made sure not to tell my wife. Immediately purchased a gfci outlet as a result. I've already been struck by lightening once (literally) so I don't want to press my luck

I hope to accomplish the no major problems thing the same way. sorry/thanks everyone.

The other day i came home with tubing to redo the plumbing, a GFCI circuit, and other bobs and doodads for the tank. In my excitment of getting home, it seemed that the tubing was the most important bit since the tank wasn't pumping (testrun, no livestock in tank). Needless to say i did a dumb thing and splashed who knows how much water on the powerstrip. I laughed when i walked by the new GFCI on the way to getting towels.

For that dumping of water, I had been messing with a leak and filled and drained the sump three different times already. With about 10-15 gallons in the sump, it doesn't seem like a big deal. But when your shop vac is only 2 gallon and blows another half gallon on the floor, it got a little old. So, I boldly started testing the limits of what I could do without draining it. I took off the top of the return tube and waited. A little water dripped from the overflow, but nothing was amiss. The hose felt empty (whatever that means, i can't figure out now, but at the time it made perfect sense). So, I pulled the bottom end off the pump. A little water poured out, which i thought was odd, since it felt empty. But I was not alarmed, put the hose down and grabbed my towel. When I went back to dry my little spill i noticed a small geyser out of the pump which apparently was running out through the stand and all over the power strip. The pump was off, but I did not think about the fact that the pump was lower than the waterline in the sump. I'll tell you though, it is a pretty quick way to drain a sump if you're in a hurry.

To be fair, that night was full of dumb things. I was alone, so I was stuck laughing at myself and wishing i had an appropriate venue to get others to laugh at me too.