Biggest mistakes or bad purchases?

[lagunastudio]

I thought it could be interesting to make a thread about bad purchases or mistakes made while reefing. I've enjoyed reading all of the featured reefs and their mistakes and would like to hear more.

 

I'll start out with a couple

 

- letting my friend start my tank with his water,filter and fish to avoid cycling - 13 damsels in a 29 gallon / 160-200 ppm of nitrate water.

- putting a 3" sand bed of sugar fine sand in my tank

- buying peppermint shrimp

- Newest one I'm starting to regret is putting 'crude' / mud in my refugium. Anytime it gets moved or the mud bed is stirred up it clouds my water and immediately drops my ph.

[seabass]

Pouring bleach into a bucket of smelly water and sand that I had siphoned out a couple of days earlier. Turns out there was ammonia in it; and ammonia and bleach don't mix.

 

 

other mistake threads

[Lawnman]

Biggest mistake purchase for me was a Tunze 9002 those skimmers are JUNK.

[rrcg50]

Listening to 2 different vendors on another site about skimmers. One was a hob and I cant remember the name the other was a I sump that runs as loud a a cement truck

 

Trading fish with a friend who forgot to tell me it was a grouper and would eat everything in its path( newbie at the time

[SpainKenya]

so far my biggest mistake has to be when i had a leak in my sump, quickly made a new sump and transfered all the water before i let the silicone fully cure in the new sump. tank fully crashed, everything died and i started over.

[JamesHL88]

Trusted a syphon overflow. Power went out, fuge ran dry, pump burnt up, 20 gallons of saltwater on the floor.

[Curry02]

Mine was the classic

 

"I don't need no RODI eff that crap. Tap water all the way baby"

 

Im only glad that at the time the tank was only a 10g

[Alexraptor]

Tap water, ended in complete tank crash a few years later.

[Whys]

Pouring bleach into a bucket of smelly water and sand that I had siphoned out a couple of days earlier. Turns out there was ammonia in it; and ammonia and bleach don't mix.

Oh man, I never would have even thought of that, but of course! Chlorine gas!

 

Did you survive?

 

Biggest mistake purchase for me was a Tunze 9002 those skimmers are JUNK.

 

-1. I love my Tunze Nano.

 

 

Flatworm-Exit at 4x dosage for 48 hours = micro fauna Apocalypse. My sand bed looked like the surface of the moon after that. Huge green hair algae bloom quickly followed, and it required fresh liverock to finally repair the damaged biotope. Don't do this.

[seabass]

Did you survive?

Sadly no.

 

 

 

 

 

Actually it turned out OK. It fizzed up, and I immediately knew something was wrong; so I left immediately and came back later to ventilate the room. I didn't know if it was going to affect my tank, but it was fine too.

[redhawk45]

Purchase mistakes: Not buying enough LR, buying a fish I didn't know the name of and find out it'll out-grow my tank (Bicolor chromis), not delaying the stocking of my tank to upgrade my lighting. Oh, and purchasing LPS and SPS from companies without seeing what they look like first hand. I spent way too much on stonies that were just dead when I got them. I finally got a SPS, after buying it locally.

 

Other mistakes: not cleaning my old live sand before adding it to my existing sand - really kicked up a good cyanno outbreak.

[Kamao]

Biggest mistake? When i got into this hobby. Its a pain in the wallet.

[envision]

When i got my 150 watt mh i put it over my right away. Before that i had a two bulb t5 unit. Killed a lot of corals and my clown

[nystang]

1. Not buying the powerful LEDs at the very beginning.

2. Buying Tanaka's Pygmy Wrasse - so shy I see him once every 3 days.

3. Buying 29g tank instead of larger.

[djfrankn]

Not researching before getting a new creature (fish or invert) and trusting the LFS guy that it was going to workout in my tank. Being an impulsive shopper.

[Thornchase]

Bought a Blue damsel....

[peewee1467]

joining nano-reef

[C.I._Reefer]

Bought a Blue damsel....

 

+1 Mine has been in my sump now for like 3 months cuz he wont leave stuff alone.

[lifen]

I still haven't made any bad buys.. Unless you count the non water proof time clock.. Although I'm not sure it's actually dead.

[lagunastudio]

blue damsels are real fgn aggressive. Had three and one got his tale eatn. Gave them all to a LFS. Damsels suck, hard as hell to get out of a tank.. the good fish stores around here don't sell damsels.

[altolamprologus]

Sexy shrimp. Munched on my sps....cute but evil

[banshee]

Emerald crabs. They're ugly and now that my bubble algae is gone they have started eating my macros and other stuff. They're making a trip to either the LFS or my pico shortly.

 

Saddleback clown. I told the store I wanted a b/w perc, got the fish home and realized what it was. Then they told me I had to pay a restocking fee to return it. I ended up giving it to the only LFS I trust now.

[andrewguilfoy]

- Sally lightfoot. DId nothing for me but eat everyone else's food.

- 70% of petco livestock purchases, dead.

- Marineland Emperor 400, noise.

- Coralife aqualight 2 bulb T5HO, ballast burnt out in 6 months.

[Euphyllia]

Every. Single. Thing. I've. Bought.

[Catbus]

forgot about having chemipure in my sump for like a year in a bit, couldn't for the life of my figure out where all this hair algae was coming from smh