What are your worst/biggest mistakes?

[snorvich]

I believe that the best way to learn is by making mistakes. So in the interest of avoiding mistakes, we can learn from the mistakes of others. Given that we are in the Reef Fish forum, what would you say is your biggest (fish related) mistake, and why was it a mistake?

[tanan]

Not having all the basic medicines(formalin,lugol,cupramine,methylene blue,malachite green,metronidazole etc) on hand.
Finding out that my A.nigripes is suffering from brook at night and its a general holiday tomorrow.She died the next day.And I still feel sorry and guilty.

[SDguy]

I think to date, not having a top on my FO, and consequently losing my very orange, very fat, pellet eating yellow belly regal angel to jumping was my biggest mistake.

[ThunderTang]

Got a second Half-black angel fish to replace the one that died, it did great in the 30 but once in the 125 i added the goby last and it killed my angel because the angel would hang out with him in his cave. God I liked that angel, may get rid of that dang goby.

[jprince]

Decided to re do my aquascape and was moving some really neat rock with lots of nooks and crannies in it. Put a big piece on the lid of my top off bucket for about 5 minutes or so until I had the smaller pieces back in place. When I picked up the rock from the bucket to put it back, I caught a flash of yellow way back in the crevices. Looked closer and saw my new baby Hippo Tang firmly wedged into the rock. Got the fish back in the water and after a few hours it was right back to it's normal self. I can't imagine what the fish was going through being out of the water for so long. I felt horrible. I now THOROUGHLY check everything I remove from the tank just in case.

[evokevin]

Originally Posted by jprince

Decided to re do my aquascape and was moving some really neat rock with lots of nooks and crannies in it. Put a big piece on the lid of my top off bucket for about 5 minutes or so until I had the smaller pieces back in place. When I picked up the rock from the bucket to put it back, I caught a flash of yellow way back in the crevices. Looked closer and saw my new baby Hippo Tang firmly wedged into the rock. Got the fish back in the water and after a few hours it was right back to it's normal self. I can't imagine what the fish was going through being out of the water for so long. I felt horrible. I now THOROUGHLY check everything I remove from the tank just in case.

i had the same thing happen to me, but with a brand new bi-color blenny. the sucker was out of water for 20 minutes before i put the rock back in, he crawled out of his pencil tip sized hole, and was fine. hes still doing great and has doubled in size!

[Wolverine]

Not quarantining fish.
Lionfish and clown trigger in 50g tank.

[MCCOOL]

Originally Posted by wolverine

not quarantining fish.

+100

[Wolverine]

Oh, and since Steve started this thread, I'm guessing he doesn't agree with my signature.

[chrismck97]

trusting a DIY topoff 15 gallons of fresh water in a 40 gallon reef tank

[LukFox]

Quarantining fish from different sources together is a no-no. One of the 3 fish in this situation brought in velvet, and all ended up dying before I could do anything to help.

On that note, quarantine everything .

And keeping big eels with tank mates was a pretty bad mistake. Even if it wasn't eating tank mates, the stress on the fish from living with a large predator was substantial. When I moved the eel into a separate tank it was amazing how much more the fish swam around and simply how much more comfortable they seemed.

[rekn]

not QTing fish.


not putting clamps on my screen, lost an amazing bellus angel who pushed the screen off the top and jumped out.


slacking on doing water changes

[jnc914]

Not regularly cleaning my ORP probe and overdosed a 40 gallon tank with ozone, killing my prized mandarin that was eating frozen food. I am still heart broken over that as I have not had luck with the 2 I attempted after.

Releasing a Regal Angel into my old 180 FOWLR without QT back in '07. It brought in velvet amd wiped out my entire tank. I lost a subadult Goldflake that was the healthiest fish I have ever received, in addition to a Chrysurus and Blueline angel.

Now I always QT.

[Toddrtrex]

I am sure there are numerous mistakes I have made over the last 20 years or so. However, the main one I can think of right now is....

Thinking that I would buy that "big" tank and stocking my current tank with fish that would fit into the big tank. That was about 3 years ago, I still don't have the big tank and had to sell those fish.

[melanotaenia]

Having discussion with the half dozen elitist fish snobs on this board who think they are right about everything.

Oh, and using an ATO on a weekend vacation.........to find lots of water on the floor!

[roktsintst]

I had 3 Rhomboids in QT and I did a 100% WC to take the meds out. Thenext morning, they were all dead! Now I just do a 25% WC and add carbon and give them a few days for the meds to completely be removed from the QT.

I have also tried to QT fish from separate sources and it is a bad idea. Let fish settle down in QT not have them fighting with other tankmates or being infected with other fish's diseases!

[Toddrtrex]

Originally Posted by melanotaenia

Having discussion with the half dozen elitist fish snobs on this board who think they are right about everything.

Oh, and using an ATO on a weekend vacation.........to find lots of water on the floor!

Do you think your first "mistake" is really called for? Should try to keep any personal attacks out of this thread.

[Big E]

Most of the mistakes I made were 20 years ago......not QTing fish, overcrowding, impulse buys, poor choice of tank mates. There is NO excuse to make mistakes like this now with all the info available on RC & the internet as a whole. Back then I had to rely on magazines I got once a month or out dated books.

Have a rock solid back up for power outages that will last multiple days. I lost my whole reef back in '90. My FO tank made it, but the fish & corals in my reef tank died.

I think the best lesson learned is not to panic if something goes wrong with a fish. I've almost killed a few fish jumping to solutions too soon. It's important to sit back & really evaluate what should be done & how it happened.

I've lost some BF's in QT on late/wrong disease diagnosis.

[maxheadroom]

My biggest mistake was getting into this hobby! Its a love/hate thing. lol.

[rekn]

Originally Posted by Toddrtrex

Do you think your first "mistake" is really called for? Should try to keep any personal attacks out of this thread.

he didnt name names so theres nothing personal about it.

[skibum9884]

Agreed. I don't think he meant any harm by this. I read it as "I talk to these 'experts' all the time and each tells me to do something different!"

Maybe I was wrong though.

[BrianD]

Originally Posted by rekn

he didnt name names so theres nothing personal about it.

Todd is a TRC member. It is his responsibility to keep threads on track and respond to potential violations of the User Agreement.

[BrianD]

Let's move on, please.

[Toddrtrex]

Edit.

Brian's posts covered it.

[kirkaz]

I would say my biggest mistake was not treating angels for flukes when I first started keeping them...I'm fairly certain I lost a beautiful Maculosus Angel and an even more beautiful Black Velvet Angel to flukes after having them for just about a month.

Oh, I also bought a Clownfish from PetCo and didn't QT it before adding to my Nano....= 3 dead fish.