Horror stories

I never realized how fortunate I was until I read these stories. My LFS gave me OK advice, not great but OK. The worst that has happened to me is 1 lost fish and red slime-ukk. That was my fault-overfeeding. They looked sooo hungry-Oh I'm also fighting hair algae--I think I'm wining.

 

Wow. Reading and knowing everyone else usually starts out with a problem or two makes me feel a lot better.

 

Ok, my story isn't that bad. So far I haven't lost anything important but it IS a story of too much too soon.

I fu*$ed myself good and proper by setting my 29g w/d/fuge under my 75. I should've known when I installed it that the thing would be perminant (since I had to drop it into the stand from the top.) So a few weeks later, here I am with a cycled tank, 200+lbs of sand and rock, and a wd/fuge that I can't get to for maintenance or additional installations. The stand and doors were too narrow to remove it that way and IT WAS LEAKING badly. I couldn't get into the stand or behind the tank so the leak remained unfixed for about 3 weeks. I eventually bit the bullet and did something stupid but necessary... I measured twice and went to home depot for 2 2x4's. At 7am in my sleepy little condo I started hammering the living sh*t out of these 2x4's until they were snug and upright. Then I knocked out the center-brace in the tank stand. Now, put this in perspective in your mind... 75g with 200+lbs of LR&LS PLUS about 800lbs of water, resting on a crossbeam supported by a single 2x4 and side supports of the stand. CONDO+CARPET+WATER+SAND+ROCK+BROKEN TANK=the end of life at the hands of my wife! Luckily all was ok. After I removed the wd I replaced the center brace and made sure it was secure. Been about a month I guess and no creaking wood or leaky fuge's. WOO! You want picturra? Me show you picturrra! (been a long night of no sleep, forgiv-a-ness please)

idiot!

 

oh yea, you see the nice upward swoop in my send line? Do I have to tell you how load the overflow gurgled? That was almost wife-death right there. And let us examine picture 3, if you enlarge it then you can see the massive puddle forming under what would be the return outlet if it wasn't capped. and then theres picture 4, in-which you can clearly see my shoe, and directly north of that the 2x4's are fulfilling the need for mental wellbeing by adding a little extra support while I get used to the idea of what I had just done.

 

ziggy...Is that xenia growing up your glass? How long did it take to do that, or did you have to glue it there? I am trying to get my xenia to grow across back of my tank. That stuff grows like weeds, so I just placed the rock there and hope it takes off! (only on week 3....so no luck yet of course!)

I am pretty sure though that I will regret this one day, but I figure it will be more interesting then looking at plain blue background

 

Oh I do have one more....this happened about 1-2 months ago. I had some maintance done on my 75g (which I later traded in a couple weeks later???) and the guy was horrified where I placed one of my powerstrip. It was on top of my sump, but far enough away from the water that I did not think it was a problem. He said he could not leave it like that, due to danger. He even talked to me about how SW is conducive to fires.
So he mounted the strip on the back of my tank. He used heavy duty velcro. Well a couple days later it fell on floor and I figured no harm done, it is still better then where I had it.

I was so lucky that I had started working at home then. I woke up smelling a strange burning smell. Could not find anything anywhere. I was painting so I thought my smeller was off. A couple hours later, the smell was obvious. I stuck my head under sump, looked, everything seemed alright but that was def. where smell came from. I got out, and started to walk away to think what to do....and I heard a big pop and flame shot up the back! (which died out as soon as I hit powerswitch thankfully)

What happened (I think) was one of the cords from my sump had leaned against skimmer, which allowed water to run directly into powerstrip...which caused fire!

The other possibility is, I was using el cheapo powerstrips and found out that there is some arc problem that occurs when cheap powerstrips are used on devices that are constantly pulling power. Somewhere on this site, Inwall has a great post on this hazzard!

So, my lesson was to 1. get rid of el cheapo powerstrips. 2. Get those ground fault strips instead (about $38 a piece at Home Depot...but WELL worth it) and placed a smoke detector right above tank!

Of course some soot was thrown into sump and caused a massive cycle...lost a couple of my favorite fish then!

(Hey I just realized something...major things happen when I am getting ready to move up in tanks...) I had just purchased a new tank and was going to replace that 75 with a 135. When I went from 29 to 75 is when I had the massive salinity drop due to my stupidity......lessen learned, no more new tanks!

 

About three years ago I decided to set up a tank after being out of the hobby for 7 years , last tank being a FOWLR. before that many very succesful FW tanks and brackish. I went and bought my 90 intending for it to be fish only. got it home and filled and then changed my mind to reef. had to buy almost everything over again, lights , more sand, filter ect... well i cycled the tank and went to the lfs who deals in reef and started to buy corals and fish, well the owner was more then happy to sell me anything and everything including not very cured live rock covered in algae. well i bought all kinds of stuff including two tridactas (did i spell that right) lol.. and caused another cycle and slowly but shirley everything started to die off. OH!!! did i mention i got a wicked case of bryopsis and didnt know what to do and it took over my tank completly. the lfs guy just kinda blew me off and i expect he didnt know how to deal with it either considerinr he had a small case as well. so here i sat greeen and hairy as hell. then the wife decided she wanted a divorce and i left for two weeks and she pulled my plug. i got back and wow!! i got fed up let the tank sit came back 6 months or so later cleaned everything out ,didnt clean the lr so well and boom !!! bryopsis again!!! gave up again..and some other kinds as well. it took me 3 more months to realize that sunlight was coming through the shade directly next to the tank which was causing the tank to get about 16 hours of light. so i blocked off the window and jumped in again.. STILL NOT CLEANING MY LR OR SAND VERY WELL!!! . lol.. everything went much better this time except for my lr kept getting worse with a layer of green slime algae covering nearly all the rock and some of the glass. i said thats it!!! so here i sit waiting for my live rock to finished getting nuked in the bathroom . damn near killed myself dumping out the bleach water when i got near the bottom when the die off caused amonia in the bottom of the container and mixed with the bleach. lol.. but i am determined to do it right and have a succesful tank. i really do love this hobby and i have the advantage this time of some really knowledgable people here to help me out when i get stuck or in a pickle... PATIENTS PATIENTS AND MORE PATIENTS... READING READING AND MORE READING.. I CURRENTLY READ ABOUT TWO HOURS A NIGHT ABOUT THIS HOBBY.. ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING I CAN... HOPE ILL GET IT RIGHT SOMEDAY..

 

How not to plum tanks together!

In keeping on topic with horror stories, close to 20 years ago when I was new to the hobby, I tried to set up two 50g breader tanks side by side. Rather than filtering them individually I plummed the two tanks together with a coupple of overflow tubes, so water was pumped into tank1 - overflowed to tank2 and was then sucked out of tank2 to complete the cycle... (This is a bad idea).

Shortly after the system was up an running, a rather large carpet anemone strayed into the first overflow tube, dragged it to the second overflow tube blocking both! The result -- 50 gallons of water sucked out of tank2, 50 gallons of water overflowed onto the carpet from tank1.

At the end of the day when I returned home, one mostly empty tank with all of the livestock dead, a burned up sump pump, and a carpet soaked with 50 gallons of salt water...

We all make mistakes, thankfully I did not give up the hobby that was to bring me many years of joy!

 

wow... that's a bad one...

 

lmfaoooooooo
now thats tragic.. good job bro