Mistakes I made as a Newbie

Discussion in 'New To The Hobby' started by inwall75, Feb 23, 2010.

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  1. Astrick117

    Astrick117 Stylophora

    Joined:
    Aug 18, 2011
    Messages:
    973
    Location:
    Clifton, NJ
    I bought someone else's problems off of CL- a TON of GHA, Aipstasia, and Bubble Algae. It was a great bargain, but I should have realized it wouldn't be as easy as I thought to get rid of.

    Next time, I will be looking for a spotless tank before buying off CL.
     
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  3. MarkSReef1382

    MarkSReef1382 Astrea Snail

    Joined:
    Nov 14, 2011
    Messages:
    64
    Location:
    SWBurbs of Chicago
    Newbie here just finished reading through all the posts...all I can say is thanks for the words of experience and much more learned. I guess you can't always trust books and magazines 100%, but instead personal experience.
     
  4. Renee@LionfishLair

    Renee@LionfishLair 3reef Sponsor

    Joined:
    May 16, 2010
    Messages:
    2,895
    Location:
    Coastal So. cal
    EDIT:

    Geez, I feel like my Uncle Clayton.... always telling the dang story.

    Sorry.... double post.... from like page 5!
     
  5. TritonsGarden

    TritonsGarden 3reef Sponsor

    Joined:
    Jun 14, 2008
    Messages:
    541
    Location:
    Lawrenceburg, TN
    Kordon Rid Ick+ turns 1000s of dollars of SPS a lovely shade of white overnight.
     
  6. BigJim

    BigJim Spaghetti Worm

    Joined:
    Nov 17, 2010
    Messages:
    183
    Location:
    Baltimore, MD
    I recently set up my first ATO system which pumps water from a reservoir under my tank. I put the water line into the tank water which obviously (or it should have been) will cause a siphon effect. I realized I could hear the pump going on and off constantly and fixed it before my SG was too badly impacted, but it could have been disastrous.
     
  7. SaltyClown

    SaltyClown Sea Dragon

    Joined:
    Feb 21, 2011
    Messages:
    549
    When I first started, I had the most amazing 10 gal reef tank for 4 years. I had a lfs that I went to all the time and the fish guy had an amazing 180 reef of his own. The guy was full of great reef tank info!! My problem really started about a year after he quite his job. The new guy was all about making money for his boss...still is. Anyway, stupidly I went against my gut and did some stuff the new guy said. Idiot! My tank took a massive nosedive after that. I went in a few times after and told him what's going on. He tells me, "you need to stop cutting corners." Ha! My tank looked far superior to any of the ones he had in the store and his personal one. So last year everything in my tank died. I sit here today with no fish or corals.
     
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  9. schackmel

    schackmel Giant Squid

    Joined:
    Jun 4, 2008
    Messages:
    3,153
    Location:
    St. Louis
    heck I am not a newbie but I just wiped out at least $1000 worth of SPS corals a couple weeks ago. We have a number of tanks set up right now holding our corals while we are in the process of rebuilding our 135g tank that cracked.

    Anyway one of the tanks is a 28g HQI nano that has all of our more expensive corals and SPS. We had a bunch of different montipora, acropora, milipora from all sort of colors ranging from strawberry shortcake to pearly milipora to rainbow monti and sunset monti and various tenius acros. We also have a war scoly and couple acans.

    Well as the months went on, the corals were growing like weeds and started encrusting each other. I got the great idea to re aqua scape the tank. Planned ahead, had a large water change ready, prime on hand and redecorated the tank AMAZINGLY. Afterwards did a large water change and turned the lights off for the night. Woke up to a bunch of bleached acros and a couple dead fish.

    What i did, was we were stockpiling rock for the new tank build, including various dry rock. There was a piece in there that I thought would look great so I stuck it in there. Well IT WAS A BIG ROCK.......way over the 5% rule.

    It is almost 3 weeks since it happened and have turned the water over a couple of times trying to kill the ammonia spike. The ammonia was off the charts. Not only killed 90% of the SPS (and still having issues with RTN on the remaining sps) but killed most of the fish. My helfrichi fire fish, various blennys all gone. Suprisingly the few LPS coral that are in there including the war scoly is doing great. My picasso clown survived along with a clown goby but other than that everything is gone.
     
  10. RJT

    RJT Spanish Shawl Nudibranch

    Joined:
    Nov 15, 2011
    Messages:
    78
    Location:
    Maryland
    I purchased a bunch of sps at my first fragfest. Went home excited about the huge amount of sps I bought and dipped them in FRESH water for 10 minutes!!! The next day I wasn't excited about the dead corals.
     
  11. nyvw

    nyvw Skunk Shrimp

    Joined:
    Dec 4, 2011
    Messages:
    275
    Location:
    New York
    Hey yall, pretty good thread goin on here, ive been a long time lurker and have had a few freshwater tanks and finally decided to start a 55g FOWLR build and at some point i would like to add corals, so i joined up ;D Anyways my first mistakes so far:

    * Not researching or planning out how i wanted to setup everything and what exactly i needed, bought a fluval 305 which i just recently returned.

    *Thought i was getting a solid deal on craigslist for a 55g w stand.. Turns out the stand was a piece of junk and i ended up tearing it apart, only to build a custom stand and reuse just the doors... The tank also is in worse shape then i thought, scratched up pretty bad and super dirty.. The setup also came with a 2x55w Ahsupply retrofit lights. not sure if that will be enough yet once i get some new bulbs. Looks like im going to end up buying a fresh new 55g from the lfs while they are having a $1/gallon sale. ugh haha Otherwise everything is goin well i think im going to start a build thread soon to get some input and some answers to questions i know i will have.

    * I also have a GSP and a figure 8 puffer in a 20 gallon freshwater..(thanks to the lfs).. right now and plan to move them into the 55 as soon as its cycled.. Im assuming that they shouldn't be kept with corals because they tend to eat/nip everything, but for now they just need to get into the bigger tank
     
  12. beigemore

    beigemore Plankton

    Joined:
    Jan 29, 2012
    Messages:
    14
    My HOB protein skimmer wasn't working very well anymore on my 58g tank and bad stuff was starting to get out of hand, so I bought an MRC MR-1 protein skimmer with Gen-X PCX-55 pump. It turns out that was way, way overkill for my tank, and the pump would cause my water to heat up because of my low total water volume. This was about 5 years into the life of that tank. It made me leave the hobby for a few years.

    Buying quality items makes a big difference, but you still have to be smart about your purchases.