What's your biggest noob mistake?

J

jrwoltman

Member
I am sure someone has made a thread like this before, so I apologize if I am stealing anybody's thunder, but I thought it might be amusing if we all shared out most monumental, colossal noob mistake. :noidea:

In addition to my cramming of nuclear green palys into numerous cracks and crevices to add some color to my tank, which today infest my tank lie aiptasia or majanos I have a doozy!!! :rant:

A few years ago I forgot to change the filter pad in my sump. Well, it was pretty dirty and clogged....so, overnight it backed up. The next morning when I woke up, the aquarium was SILENT... I ran into the living room only to step into an inch of water. :tsk:

My pump had emptied my sump and burned itself out, the air pump I have attached to my skimmer almost electrocuted me when I unplugged it from the inch of water it was in (apparently, saltwater is a great conductor of electricity), and my Coralife powerstrip/timer was totally fried. Needless to say it was a bad day. :faint:

Thankfully, no livestock perished and a few $100 later I can laugh about it, sort of. What is yours??? LOL. :pound:
 
I did not do my own research and listen to the LFS. The store I bought my tank from set me up with PC lighting. Once my tank was ready for coral I wnet there as well. I would ask if I could keep certain pieces and the always said yes. I ended up killing alot of SPS before I realized they were only trying to make a sale.
 
My biggest noob mistake is making RODI and not checking on it in time and having a minor flood to deal with.

This happened more than once too lol.
 
DD said:
My biggest noob mistake is making RODI and not checking on it in time and having a minor flood to deal with.

This happened more than once too lol.[/QUOTE

I do this monthly. No longer considered a mistake. I look at overflowing ro as a part of reefing
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Well, I just went downstairs into my laundry room to water all over the floor. LOL....I forgot I started it yesterday...oops
 
Well, I wasn't going to admit this, but as long as you asked...This is soooo embarrassing since as a pretty experienced reefer, not a noob, I made the stupidest most expensive mistake of my 20 years of reefing. I had an outbreak of marine velvet in my fully stocked DT. Probably about $1000 in fish, including a trio of heniochus dephreutes that I truly loved. All died except a hawkfish and surprisingly a regal tang. This is the first time I had ever had to let my DT run fallow. But that's not the embarrassing part!

With the marine velvet I quarantined the 2 surviving fish in cupramine, and did my water change 3 weeks later with water from my DT, my still INFECTED fallow DT. I didn't even think about it. It was like I was on auto pilot and doing what I always did.

I put the 2 surviving fish back in the DT 7 weeks later. As time went on I carefully QT all additional fish, had the tank fully stocked with another $1000 of fish including a second trio of heniochus, and 3 months later had another outbreak of velvet. It finally occurred to me after this outbreak :banghead: that I probably reinfected my own fish from the infected DT water. Lost all fish but one. Now that is stupid!
 
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Biggest noob mistake was not quarantining all incoming fish, lost a lot that time to ich and marine velvet, second biggest mistake was buying cheap, not adequate equipment trying to save money. Kept upgrading every few months for better. Could have saved thousands of dollars over time, if I just bought good stuff from beginning.
 
Thinking when I started this hobby I could keep it simple. Every mistake since then all started that day....

Biggest noob mistake was learning to not drink and reef. Most notably having enough one night to forget I had manually turned on the alk pump to make a slight bump. Well, 1 liter of alk later the resivour was dry. I woke up to find Xmas in the tank, CA had percipitated out of the water and there was snow everywhere. No big long term effects other than a lesson learned.
 
Mine has to be when I planned to do my water change. Fill my 44 gallon bucket, check, put in heater and pump to mix, check, hours later remove 40 gallons from display and add new water, check. Man that was easy... But I missed one step, actually two, add salt to 44 gallon bucket to mix and check salinity. Let's just say a couple more water changes quickly followed. Didn't lose anything but never made that mistake again.
 
When i first started off I topped off my tank with 1.025 saltwater, it hadn't occurred to me that the salt wouldn't evaporate! Caught it before anything died but i had salinity at 1.030 at the end of the month!!!
 
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