Mistakes I made as a Newbie

1. buying my first pieces of LR that had algae growth on it and what I thought was a cool "anemone" (aiptasia).. well got a little GHA and aiptasia outbreak down the road..

2. overstocking when my tank was FO since 1998-2009.. went through probly 100 different fishes and such..

3. bought PCs for first light.. (not complaining)

learned:
1.now only have 4 small fishes (low bio-load), and dont buy LR with bunch of bad crap on it (so it doesnt spread in tank)

2. will buy all T5s or better on my next reef tank (so I can do SPS,clams,etc)

3. will do a sump/refugium in next tank as well.. mangroves, macro algae, etc...

4. will use a DSB on next tank and not like my CC I have now.

 

havent really had any mistakes in my 7months reefing all thanks to 3reef But the one thing that i do regret is my stand, it has made it impossible for me to have a sump, and i wish i knew about them and 3reef before i bought it. And with researching on 3reef i have learned to do things right the first time and things have been running pretty smoothly and corals are thriving

 

im gonna pat myself on the back , and remove the horseshoe from you know where , for having a great lfs that helped me along greatly for a newbie. and of course , this wonderrful site , full of knowledgable people and so helpful. but my biggest mistakes in the early going, were getting corals that i didnt research or were above my capabilities at the time. i think pretty minor compared to others. id like to thank others for being my guinea pigs.

 

I bought an anemone because my clown "needed" one and I thought they looked cool.

Well, if most people ask for my opinion on 3Reef on whether or not they should purchase an anemone, 99% of the time, I will say NO, DEFINITELY NOT!!!

My opinion now is that anemone's, for the most part, should be left in the ocean and only sold to people who I would consider "advanced aquarists". At PR, I was able to enforce this because I would just tell the customer, I wasn't going to sell it to them. I know darn-well that they just drove to the next LFS in town and bought one from them, but at least my conscience was clear.

Many years have passed since this mistake and I always have to hold my tongue on posts where people are so very proud of their new anemone. Here's some common fallacies;

Any species of clownfish will host with any species of anemone ....nope, not even close.
My anemone is so healthy that it splits often.....Nope, splitting is a survival mechanism. Your anemone is close to dieing and hoping that by splitting, it's clone will manage to survive elsewhere in the ocean. Unfortunately, it's not smart and doesn't realize it's "ocean" is only 75 gallons big.
My light-colored anemone is beautiful. Put it under proper lighting and feed it properly, it will no longer be pretty....it will be an ugly dark brown.
Anemones don't eat clownfish....yes they do. The only reason they don't is they don't even know the clown is there. If you were to rub the slime coat (don't actually do this) off your clown and then it swam back into it's anemone, it's food.
Anemones make a reef tank look cool. LOL!!! Wait until it goes on a walkabout and kills hundreds of dollars of corals in one night. Even worse, sometimes they wander into a powerhead and nuke an entire tank. If I tied up a reefkeeper and played Russian roulette with my pistol aimed at their tank, they would be VERY UPSET. However, reefkeepers do this to themselves all the time by purchasing anemones.

 

I have something in common with so many people on this thread

My problem was aiptasia - didnt know what they where (in my 20s ) thought it was cool to have 1, then 3 and then - I dont know how many it got to - I realised it was a problem once corals started failing to open etc

I dealt with that problem all the wrong way - no internet , no one to ask, so I removed rocks, and plucked the things off using tweezers
I did sort of keep up with them to a degree


other big mistake I made in my 20s was that I was arrogant to the extent I figured that I was the exception to certain rules - of course I could get a Regal Tang to feed and that Gonipora would be great in my tank you all know how those ended up, dont you

Im pleased I only made the last 2 mistakes once - I have never purchased a 2nd of either.

Steve

 

My noob mistakes would be far too many to list here,the post would be too long and no one would read it.This site has been such a wealth of information,thank's to everyone whether or not we've actually communicated,reading the threads has helped tremendously.Now...if I could just find one like it for sailboat racing.

 

Thanks for all the great info!

 

Underestimating the pain caused by a bristleworm. Bristleworms are great scavengers, but leave nasty little bristles in filtration equipment. After a few painful extractions of bristles from my hand after cleaning out my filter, I finally did the smart thing and bought nitrile gloves. Double up!

 

I can't remember all the mistakes I made but the biggest one is not asking question on 3reef and trusting LFS guy.

 

I thought I needed to use a veggy clip to feed my first yellow tang, so I bought a clip and some nori, and put it in the tank, then left it alone. Next morning, it was gone so I put in more nori. When I got home from work that day, my water was milky and I realized that my fish had not eaten any of it! The nori had just dissolved. A day later all my fish had white spot. 1-2 weeks later they were dead.

So I learned 2 things from this:
1) When using a veggy clip- if the tang has not finished it by the time I go to bed, I take it out! I usually only leave it in my tank for around 4 hours.
2) Always have hospital tank!