What was your biggest mistake with your aquarium?

Oh my. Absolutely, it was buying live, aquacultured rock. I've spent so much time removing nasty hitchhikers from it....

 

Mine was marrying the witch I did....

 

Allthough i've made many,luckily i haven't made any disastrous ones,not using ro/di had been my most common one.My biggest one though,was looking at the reef tank at a pet store in another nearby city a little over 3 years ago and becomming instantly hooked and have had a psychological reef disorder ever since.;D

 

No drip loop to the chiller.

Mussels.

Tiger tail cucumber.

Under estimating evaporation, prior to vacation.

Gluing green star polyps to the back wall.

Sea horses.

And buying impulsively again and again and again. Thought I had a plan, but it all went out the window when I saw the blue spotted jaw fish.

 

This won't be a comment everyone will agree with or appreciate, but cycling with a live fish.

I hate losing anything in my tanks from a common feather duster to any fish, but I lost a chromis and a blue damsel and the poor things suffered and that to this day still bothers me.

Secondary to that is hurrying an early water change and one not having nearly enough of the proper type of water or salt mix to do a good water change so I had to go low gravity and tap water to compensate and paid the price for not giving the process the proper care or attention.

 

Putting Xenia and Kennya Tree in my tank. Don't do it just don't do it!

 

not removing the unneeded sponges/cleaning the sponge on my return pump. Created a situation with GHA that took 5 months to beat.

 

My biggest mistake was not getting a quarantine tank. Recently my royal gramma got ick, which spread to every other fish, so I quarantined all of them. To make it worse, my mom was with my brother and SHE actually let him feed a VERY large amount of food, causing ammonia spikes. Only my algae blenny and ocellaris clownfish survived, but I lost my firefish, my roayl gramma, and my falco hawkfish. Now I'm paying for that mistake...

 

Gee... I wish I could choose more than one from the list!

I never had the overstocking issue. If I had to choose only one, it would be lighting equipment. I was also mislead to buy one of the "Wave Point" fixtures that Drs. F&S are pushing so hard now. What a big disappointment that was!! Light has only 1 switch, either all bulbs on or all bubls off. Not even a timer or moon light... I wish I could go back with what I've learned so far. Lately I got into SPS corals and this light (even with brand new bulbs preferred by most hobbyists) isn't enough to keep a stylophora, for example. Mine has been slowly dying since I introduced it in the tank.

Second mistake was overdosing Magnesium (among other things) in my tank. Nobody liked that in my tank. Corals, fish, everyone looked sad until I had to do a dramatic 70% or so water change. Now I do pay more attention to peoples signatures... the "Take is slow, let it grow" is a good moto for people in this hobby.

 

My last tank, first round, I went to Scotland for 6 weeks. I had a couple that came by daily to check the cats and deal with the tanks (3 gallon nano, 10 gallon damsel/crab, and 38 gallon reef). I had everything set up on surge protectors except one thing. I couldn't find a surge protector with a timer, and the timers wouldn't plug into a surge protector, so I plugged the lights in to regular timers in regular outlets.

My 2nd week into my trip I got a phone call...my friends got to my house in the morning and the tank was just sitting there, very cloudy, and almost everything was dead (some crabs & snails made it). There had been a very severe thunderstorm the night before that had caused a power surge. All the surge protectors on the 38 gallon shut off, and apparently the lights fried the tank. My friends felt horrible, but I told them there was no way it was their fault...unless they could affect the weather!

Thanks to good friends, they got everything out, moved the survivors to my 10 gallon (which wasn't affected), then called me. I had left water, so they did a water change for me & turned everything but the lights back on. When I got back a month later, I replaced the horrible black sand I'd had in there & started over. It sucked.