Mistakes I made as a Newbie

Thought I was "smart" enough to just blaze through all formalities. Mostly though, I thought I could get by with cheap equipment. :-/

 

Jake - Thanks for posting this. You just saved me from continuing to make the same mistake. 8)

 

my first mistake was putting too much faith in my LFS. i ended up buying lights that i will eventually upgrade. i have learned to listen to people's opinions but do a lot of research on my own. everyone seems to have a different opinion on every subject in this hobby (except for skimmers. everyone seems to agree that a skimmer is needed). if you ask why they believe the things they believe, they will tell you about something that happened a year ago and you will probably realize that they jumped to the wrong conclusion. i also put too much faith in a faulty hydrometer in the beginning and went for a while with my salinity at 1.040. i went through two more faulty hydrometers before i bought my refractometer. imo, get the best equipment you can afford and save yourself trouble and stress down the road. Hey, if it was easy, we wouldn't take so much pride in our tanks. All my mistakes just keep adding to the history of the tank. if you keep this thread going, i will probably have many more mistakes to add next week.

Ha, just read this response from two years ago. No SAY, not everyone agrees on a skimmer.

 

this has been a good read

 

Trying to go cheap on a skimmer;
Starting with a HOB filter instead of a sump;
Tried to go cheap on lighting;
Buying live rock instead of dry rock like Marco Rock

 

I'm pretty good at sniffing out a "snake oil" supplement, food, piece of equipment, etc in a second. There's a reason for that. For my first 4 or 5 months in this hobby, I bought every single one on the market at that time. ;D I'm not joking. (As you guys are seeing, my entry into this hobby was an expensive one).

If there's a product that you want to add, hit the 3Reef search engine. It's probably been discussed 30 times. If it's not there, put up a question. Asking a question is free and won't possibly harm your reef.

 

Wow, when I first started in 2006, the words read and book was not part of my vocabulary.
Fishes were always good with me because I gained some experience in the LFS where I worked. But when I attempted corals, man that was my era of trial and error.
I had a tank filled with nems and sponges, I would always take the sponges out of the water to "see if they were ok". (bad Idea)
I had a tank with stylophora and zoanthids under 24/7 175W 6500K metal halide... No chiller
I collected live rock from the ocean and placed it straight into my DT.

No fish were lost in my experimental phase

 

Some of my mistakes:
Not quarantining. Put fish into the main display twice only for them to break out with ich a few days later

Buying some coral growing on a small rock, not realizing it was infested with aiptasia (bristle worms and bubble algae, too). Didn't know what it was at the time so didn't think anything of it at the LFS when I saw the hundreds in their coral tank. Ended up tearing down my 120g to nuke the rock (and catch a damsel).

Not calibrating my refractometer. 1.025 was really 1.019. Didn't figure it out until I tested the water from the local fish store when I bought some fish and it read 1.030. Inquired and they said their water was 1.024. They were right. My refractometer was off. Assumed it was calibrated correctly from the manufacture.

Buying a bunch of blue-green chromis and noticed one had an unusual red line at the store. I figured must be an injury and even if it didn't make it, I still had about 14 others. Turned out to be a common fatal disease that was highly contangious and it wiped out the entire group. After doing some better research, learned they aren't as hardy as I first read. Never buy any fish that has anything unusual going on with it. They had ich also, and in the end I lost a few other fish that were in the quarantine tank who had been doing fine for two weeks. Should have finished the quarantine first on the first group, moved them out, then bought the chromis at least.

This one was stupid. Needed to borrow the airline valve off of the skimmer to drip acclimate. Stuck a check valve on that slimmer line that's used to get the siphon started and hung it behind the tank. Guess I stuck the check valve on backwards and it preceded to drip water behind the tank for about a day. Didn't notice until the living room carpet was wet.

Not being more meticulous with the dozen electrical wires. Skimmer started to overflow one day when I was messing with it. The water proceeded to run down the wires into the powerstrips. After a few seconds of snap, crackle and pop I pulled the main power from the wall. Make sure you have drips loops on the wires and any power strips located where water can leak on them. And have a gfic so power will shut down if water does happen to get into the electric stuff.

So from now, everything gets quarantined for a month. Even the snails and hermits. I'll never buy live rock, chances are too high of getting pest like aipstasia or bad algae. I let the bacteria build on it' own. Any coral will get dipped with something like coral-rx to kill off anything that might be hiding on it.

One other, I'll never buy another damsel. That pretty blue little bastard has been a pain ever since I got him (was warned). Bullies everything in the tank. I would have fought the aipstasia with aipstasia-x which was working ok, but I needed to get the damsel out around the same time. That fish was impossible to catch with rock in the the tank. Took out 160# of rock to get him and put him in the quartine tank now. He has a separate compartment with in the quaratine when I have other fish in there. He gets super pissed off and turns black for a while when I segregate him. For some reason he feels the entire tank is his, whether it's the 29 gallon quarantine or the 120g.

 

Being new to this forum and the hobby, it is very comforting to know I'm not the only one who's made common SW mistakes. I originally wanted just a 50 gallon FOWLR tank, but as I have searched and researched I see that it is feasible to have a reef tank even in the desert southwest where I live. I have learned that you can't always trust commercialized pet stores and to check as many resources as possible before purchasing anything (not easy for an impulse buyer). I had a Yellow-tail Blue Damsel, a Royal Gramma, two Firefish and a Coral Beauty Angel in my tank within a month and a half of setup and worse - none of which had been through quarantine because I had not known to do so (LFS just said to make sure to "climatize" new fish to new tank). Only my firefish survived the onset of ich and ammonia poisoning. I am grateful that through my ignorance, at least I didn't go so far as to purchase corals. I have a lot to learn and am grateful to have 3reef forum amongst the best resources to set me on the right reefing course. A year from now I will be happy to show off my first coral. I will continue reading and discussing while I wait.. patiently (for a change).

 

We had one guy use aquarium salt for his tank. A guy working at petco told him it was the right stuff. Imagine the cost of buying enough aquarium salt for a 90 gallon tank.