What's the dumbest thing you've done to your aquarium/fish?

[MikefromNH]

Leopardess replied to one of my threads and reminded me of a foolish thing I did years ago.

She said,
Just dont fill the tank so that the water is touching the glass, obviously.

10 years ago I had my 90 gal setup with 4 4" oscars and 5 5" tinfoil barbs,....or something along those lines for fish stock. Well, my apartment at the time had a wood stove and electric heat. Obviously, I wasn't about to use the electric heat so I burned wood. The apartment was so dry I must have lost 2 gallons a day out of the tank due to evaporation. I got sick of adding water so often so I figured I'd max it out. In other words I filled the tank til' it touched the bottom of the glass tops. First mistake. The only exposed surface area was where the plastic strips were supposed to be on the rear of the tops. My second mistake was not realizing that only water was evaporating, not toxins. My water changes were almost non-existent because I figured I was adding fresh water every day.The toxins built up and that was the beginning of the end.

That night my cheap noisy W*M airpump was driving me nuts so I unplugged it. Third and fatal error. On my way to work the next morning I gave the tank a quick look. Everything looked fine. When I came home 12 hrs later, well......you can figure out the rest of the story.

The bottom line was laziness on my part. I got so tired of topping the tank off daily that I tried to squeeze in an extra day before the next fill-up. Sure, I didn't have to add anything that night, instead I was removing things. :(

Has anyone else done something stupid to their aquarium(s)?

[sky.eyes.woman]

This was also about 10 years ago for me as well...I was a fish noob then. Everyone makes mistakes with their first tank, right? Hehe. Well here goes mine: 29 gallon tank, set up for a few months with some nice little community fish in it, including a mix of neons and gold tetras. I loved those little things, they shoot around in the water looking like little bullets with their gold selves. Cuuuuute. Anyway, one weekend of shopping I found myself in the fish store, looking for some new additions. What's that over there in that tank? Some pretty little jewel cichlids! :gasp: So pretty! Can I have two?!?! Sure, the guy says. He bags them up for me and I take them home and float them, you know the rest. Never thought for a minute, 'Hey he didn't ask me what else I had in my tank.' All is well for a few days...I had a habit of watching the fish for a while after work. I was sitting there enjoying my nice little tank one night and all of a sudden, one of the jewels rockets up from the bottom, driving all the gold tetras into a corner in the top...and eats one right in front of my face! :eek: Luckily I had a 10 gallon set up in another room with just some mollies and platies in there, so I jumped up and grabbed the net and got the lucky survivors in there quick as...well, quick as a hungry jewel cichlid. Oooooops. The jewels stayed alone in the 29 after that and wound up spawning for me a few times!

[CajunCC]

This actually happened not too long ago. HORRIBLE, but didn't cause any loss of life, aquatic or otherwise.

I was just doing a routine water change. Siphoning out of my 29 gallon into a 5-gallon bucket. Then I got the bright idea to convert my Magnum 350 to the micron cartridge. So I unhook the filter and take it to the bathtub. And I start taking it all apart and such. I throw the micron filter in it and put it all back together. I fill it up and take it back to my bedroom where I find my 29 gallon tank almost empty. The 5 gallon bucket was WAY overflowed and the carpet was like a dang lake. I nearly crapped my pants. I pulled the siphon out real quick, sending more water flying around the room. Then I ran downstairs for the shop vac. Hauled the shop vac upstairs to suck up the water. When I started vacuuming the water, I noticed a strange smell. I look into the tank and there's one of my plastic plants melting like crazy up against the heater I forgot to unplug. Argh! That all took a while to clean up. I almost gave up on aquariums right then. I'm just glad the water didn't leak through the 1st floor ceiling.

[daveedka]

Long ago as well, I put an airstone in my tank complete with tubing knowing full well I would be getting an air pump the next day, I left the tubing hanging over the side of the tank I mean after all it was a good 1/2" above the water surface :D The next day I came home to my son (10 years old mind you) in a complete panic dumping cold tapwater in my 55g which at that time only had about 4" of water left in it. All of my equipment made it through as did my fish. my Wife however almost ended the aquarium hobby once and for all.
BTW the steam cleaners they rent at the grocery store, and big boxes are great for getting fishy water out of a carpet. it beat the shop vac hands down.
Dave

[MikefromNH]

This actually happened not too long ago. HORRIBLE, but didn't cause any loss of life, aquatic or otherwise.

I was just doing a routine water change. Siphoning out of my 29 gallon into a 5-gallon bucket. Then I got the bright idea to convert my Magnum 350 to the micron cartridge. So I unhook the filter and take it to the bathtub. And I start taking it all apart and such. I throw the micron filter in it and put it all back together. I fill it up and take it back to my bedroom where I find my 29 gallon tank almost empty. The 5 gallon bucket was WAY overflowed and the carpet was like a dang lake. I nearly crapped my pants. I pulled the siphon out real quick, sending more water flying around the room. Then I ran downstairs for the shop vac. Hauled the shop vac upstairs to suck up the water. When I started vacuuming the water, I noticed a strange smell. I look into the tank and there's one of my plastic plants melting like crazy up against the heater I forgot to unplug. Argh! That all took a while to clean up. I almost gave up on aquariums right then. I'm just glad the water didn't leak through the 1st floor ceiling.


Well, since you didn't lose any fish, I'll have to give this story at least a chuckle! (more like a LOL!!) ;) Hmmmm....how were the beers? Just kidding :D Glad all was well in the end.

Come on folks, you know you did something stupid, swallow your pride!! It's a good time to make light of a bad situation. (unless it's real bad:() Let's hear it!

[hey]

Long ago as well, I put an airstone in my tank complete with tubing knowing full well I would be getting an air pump the next day, I left the tubing hanging over the side of the tank I mean after all it was a good 1/2" above the water surface :D The next day I came home to my son (10 years old mind you) in a complete panic dumping cold tapwater in my 55g which at that time only had about 4" of water left in it. All of my equipment made it through as did my fish. my Wife however almost ended the aquarium hobby once and for all.
BTW the steam cleaners they rent at the grocery store, and big boxes are great for getting fishy water out of a carpet. it beat the shop vac hands down.
Dave
wait. I'm lost :o. Did the water get siphoned out throught the air line tubing? or did your son accidentally do something?

[Dr_Woo]

First days after getting my 10g., 3 actually, me, my mom, and my sis go shopping for fish. We get about 8 fish, float the bags and put them in (fish included serpae tetras, swordtail, and 2 small ANGELS, that's right ANGELS). Now since me and my family knew nothing about fish keeping back then, the tank was of course not cycled. The angels died within hours and soon others were dropping like flies. After a few days, things finally stop dying, but the water is getting a little murky from about 9 to 10 fish (my mom's theory at the time was to basically replace anything that died as quickly as possible). OK, so we decide to change their water....and in my mother's words "How do we do that?" With no one having any idea, my mom decides to take out the whole gravel, scrub it, and while doing this the fish would be in a bucket. A bucket that did not contain any aquarium water, NOOOOO because the aquarium water was "dirty", and the other was clean. I did remember reading something about water changes back then, but paid no attention to it. My Spidey-sense starts tingling and i tell my mom that maybe that isn't such a good idea. "Nonsense, they'll be fine....it's only for 10 min." Well it turns out that 90% of the fish didn't last 30 secs. in chlorinated water. The only survivor that i did have was the most tolerant sword tail, and fish i ever had. What i put him through i could not imagine. He did pass away after a few weeks when getting ich. My mom totally fed up with all this finally decided to stop buying fish, and actually gave me time to start researching all this fishy goodness. Now her apartment contains a healthy (most of the time) 55g. that she can pretty much maintain herself. I also have a 29g. and am planning to get something over 55g. in the future. I am so proud of my mom, because now she actually cares about the fish, and even though she doesn't show it (swears at them half the time for the $$$ and time they cost her), i know deep down she is a fishaholic. So here is a shout out to all the hard-headed people that feel so special after finally listening to good advice, and things working out afterwards. MOM, I LOVE YOU!!!! (Note: I didn't mean anything bad in that second to last line, so please cook dinner for us tomorrow night....)

[daveedka]

wait. I'm lost . Did the water get siphoned out throught the air line tubing? or did your son accidentally do something?

1/4" airlines seem to be very adept at starting their own siphon. Sorry I didn't clarify that. This is the reason for the check valve reccomendation given by almost anyone who uses airline tubing. The small tubes will just somehow start a siphon, I don't know if current causes it, or some kind of presure or what but I know they are really dependable for this. My 10 year old son was doing everything he could think of to help me out, and save my fish.
dave

[Blinky]

Earlier this year I was cleaning my small tank. I wanted to take the heater bracket out and clean it (had lots of gunk on the suction cups), so I unplugged the heater and placed it on top of my HOB filter (that in itself is a dumb thing to do, I know). I cleaned and replaced the heater bracket, changed the water, refilled the tank, and plugged everything back in. Including the heater (which was still sitting on top of the filter!)
Nothing bad really happened, thank goodness, but it was up there for long enough to heat up and melt a groove in the filter's top. I threw the heater out even though it showed no signs of damage, and won't ever do that again! Like I've said before, I seem to need to learn a lot of things the hard way :rolleyes:

[Fishsmurf]

Mine is similar to Cajun's but with a 55g. I had just started siphoning one day and had the 500cc Gran Prix on in the background, anyhow the race started to get interesting so I turned up the volume on the race, clipped the syphon closed and left it hanging in the tank whilst I settled down to watch the last 15 or so laps, after all I'm only gonna be 20mins and it's clipped closed (and here's the important bit) or at least thought I did. :rolleyes:
Now, I always stand the buckets on a towel to if there is a little spillage it doesn't mess up the carpet and my fiance doesn't hack off vital parts of my anatomy, the down side of this is that it acted like a muffler to the sound of a gently overflowing bucket, so the first I knew of my latest attempt to turn my lounge into a teranium was when my feet started to get wet, through a completley soaked carpet :eek: .... It must have siphoned about 35 - 40 gallons all over the lounge floor... It took me hours to clean up and I still had another two tanks to do!! It made for a very long day... :rolleyes:
Off the back of that I made a great discovery though... Get rid of carpets and install parquet flooring, it is a lot quicker to clean up if you have a spill !!!

[OrionGirl]

I feed frozen food, and have found it's easier to pop all the cubes out of the packaging and store them in a tupperware in the freezer. Good enough. Fed the last of the cubes, and was taking the tupperware to the kitchen to rinse it out, and decided to just dump the residue (bits of food, and a few ice crystals) straight into my 40 gallon tank. All the fish that zipped right in to eat were dead 2 hours later, including a group of rainbows I was raising to try breeding, all the neons, all the danios, and 3 or 4 juvenile gouramies.

[happychem]

Before knowing anything about aquaria, and just following the advice of lfs employees I was keeping 2 common plecos, 4 swordtails, a few king blue tetras, and 4 albino cories in a 10g tank! :thud:

I don't think that's terribly surprising for someone without a clue, but looking back with what I know now about stocking levels, it sure feels foolish.;)

edit: OG, I don't get it, was it the ice crystals? I've never fed frozen food before, but I've been considering adding some to the meal plans so you've got my interest.

[OrionGirl]

Near as I can tell, yes it was the ice crystals melting in the tank. I've since quit using the tupperware, and make sure to completely that the food before feeding, and haven't had any problems since. The only fish to die were those that zipped in and were pigs--the bristlenose, rainbow shark, kuhli's, and pulcher all survived the incident without harm. I did water tests as soon as I discovered the deaths, and nothing was out of line--I did a large water change, anyway, but no one else died past those immediate losses.

[Dr_Woo]

Near as I can tell, yes it was the ice crystals melting in the tank. I've since quit using the tupperware, and make sure to completely that the food before feeding, and haven't had any problems since. The only fish to die were those that zipped in and were pigs--the bristlenose, rainbow shark, kuhli's, and pulcher all survived the incident without harm. I did water tests as soon as I discovered the deaths, and nothing was out of line--I did a large water change, anyway, but no one else died past those immediate losses.

Make sure to completely what??? Stop keeping us in suspense here, lol. I'm not sure what you do but i just take a cube from the freezer, drop it in the tank and kinda hit it and move it around in the water to make it melt. I don't think my fish had any problems yet. Is the way i do it wrong?

[OrionGirl]

Completely thaw--sorry for the typo. I thaw the frozen food in a small jar before adding it to the tank. This way the fish aren't trying to eat frozen foods.

[daveedka]

Dr_Woo
:OT: I used to just thaw the frozen stuff in the tank as well, or thaw it in a jar and dump the entire contents in the tank. It was brought to my attention that there is a lot of un usable gunk, and juice in a frozen food cube, and that I was simply adding unnecessary pollutants to my tank by doing this. So I started rinsing my frozen cubes in a brine shrimp net until they are totally thawed out. I don't feed enough to know how much difference it makes, but I don't put the juice in my tanks anymore.
Dave

[mayreee]

About 10 years ago, when I was 12, I accidentally dumped like A LOT of fish food in my 10 gallon tank. I didn't even clean it up. I just figured they would eat it. Not to mention all the times I did 100% water changes/cleaning in my tank. I always wondered why my fish always died. Thank God I have the internet now.

[terror]

for me it was dumping large amounts of rocksalt into my 15 gallon tank with swordtails.. :)
they all died. turned into salted fish:D

[reiverix]

When I built my DIY CO2 reactor I forgot to put the bio-balls in it and cemented it together. I'm embarassed to say I done this twice within a half hour. I had to head out to Lowes to get the parts again so the third time I bought plenty of spares. It's amazing how worked up I got over such a trivial thing.

[SnakeIce]

I put a peice of petrified wood that had red and green colorations in a tank that had fish sensitive to any metal in the water. it wasn't untill the fish had sucumbed to skin problems did I take the peice out and realize that the red and green was iron and copper in the petrified wood.

I still have that peice of petrified wood sitting beside my aquarium as a reminder to think through what I am putting in my aquarium.

[Debra Mark]

I have 2 that come to mind - both happened about 20 years ago....

-we lost a 10-12" blue-eyed plecostamus and my husband decided he would give him a funeral by flush - he went down the drain, no problem. The next day our toilet had to be taken right off the floor so a very stuck & bloated plecostamus could be fished out! :o

-we needed to get a bigger tank for our growing Pacu, so my husband (him again! :idea2: ) decided to build a tank in a console tv cabinet. Against the advice of a friend and lfs owner, he built it 24" high. I was home sick one day and laying on the couch when I heard a single, sharp rap - I looked up to see water pouring out of the tank, but no visible damage. I was sick, crying, swearing at the fish who didn't want to be caught, and trying to mop up the water all at the same time! My husband came home to a soggy floor, a tank that had cracked right across the bottom, and a Pacu sitting in a cooler (the only thing we had that was big enough!) Miles went downstairs (we lived in an apartment building) to let his boss know he wouldn't be in the next day, and his boss said, "I know - come and look!" He had a water stain on his ceiling and his hanging plant was upside down on the livingroom floor! A lesson learned the hard way about glass thickness and tank construction :rolleyes:

[Leopardess]

Sometimes I just throw in the frozen cubes, too. No harm so far....I wonder what happened...

I haven't had a really stupid thing happen. Unless you count the first time I bought fish: 5g tank. One betta, ONE DYED strawberry tetra, and ONE harlequin rasbora. Aye karumba. I straightened that out within a week though.

I'd say my biggest disaster was when my 55g heater crapped out and I came home to 96F degree water!!!:eek: I check the thermometers a lot more now...and got a better heater. Thankfully, and almost unbelievably, not a single fish died...not even the celebese rainbows!

[SnakeIce]

just occured to me that the heater being turned way down and not checking it or paying attention to the water tempurature could be one. the temperature in my 20 gallon had slowly gotten lower and was sitting at 64 degrees when I finally said why does the water feel so cold and checked the thermometer.

it was so gradual that no one seemed to be haveing any problems and I just didn't think about it.

I have gradually upped the tempurature and its now back up to 74 and I will probably turn the temp up just abit more to hit the middle of the 74-78 range that is the best range for the plants.

[Paccula]

When I set my tank up for the first time years ago, I was like most newbes and just stuck whatever was pretty in it. I am a fan of sharks (real sharks), so when I saw "sharks" in the pet store, of course I was sucked in. Iridecent sharks, bala sharks, red tipped, red tailed. I must have tried them all. at $10 a pop, mind you! of course they all died sooner or later. the iridecents rubbed their noses against the glass until they were raw. the reds were agressive and killed my beloved sword tails. I forget what happened with the balas, but I'm sure they didn't last too long either.
I was so young I could not drive then, so my sister drove me to the store, and never said anything about why I kept buying all these expensive fish over and over.

I am ashamed to admit, I recently got sucked into buying more fish I did not know about. pictus cats are not happy in 10gallon tanks, and esspecialy pictus from walmart... who get covered in ich real fast. erf. I will never, NEVER do that again, and I know now to always shop for fish alone. I don't have the will power to go against friends who are not fishkeepers who insist I buy the prettiest fish in the store :sad

[OrionGirl]

I don't think my fish died from the frozen food, but rather from the ice crystals that had formed in with the food--the tupperware with food had been in use for about 2 months, so there was a significant build up of ice crystals. While I'm not sure, I doubt those ice crystals were pure H20.

[Paccula]

I don't think my fish died from the frozen food, but rather from the ice crystals that had formed in with the food--the tupperware with food had been in use for about 2 months, so there was a significant build up of ice crystals. While I'm not sure, I doubt those ice crystals were pure H20.

do fish die simply from eating ice? I have, on several occasions, put ice cubes in my aquariums in the heat of summer when the temperatures got way too hot. The fish seemed to like this, they would swim around the cubes in the cooler water. none ever got sick or died because of this

[ambrosiamonkey]

do fish die simply from eating ice? I have, on several occasions, put ice cubes in my aquariums in the heat of summer when the temperatures got way too hot. The fish seemed to like this, they would swim around the cubes in the cooler water. none ever got sick or died because of this


I do this too, but I put the ice cubes in a ziplock baggie first, so that the melted water doesn't mix with aquarium water.

When the water in the baggie is fully melted, I just toss the whole thing back in the freezer for the next heat wave.

It's worked great for me, but I've moved now and the tanks are in a cool basement, I doubt I'll have to do it anymore.

[OrionGirl]

I doubt most fish would have a problem with cooler temps, or from eating frozen foods. The specific problem I had was that this wasn't fresh ice--think along the lines of a freezer in serious need of defrosting. Those ice crystals aren't clean, and I don't think they are pure water.

[SomeGuy88]

I fed processed cheese to my oscar. Not a good Idea. Tank took forever to clean up.

[125gJoe]

"What's the dumbest thing you've done to your aquarium/fish?"

The same thing as the first post in this thread.

>> Not enough water changes. <<
That was many years ago - with no such thing as helpful "Internet Forums."

[karfixer]

Impulse buying a Pleco for a planted tank :idea2: I drop frozen food in my tanks, never lost any fish. My Gouramis hardly wait for them to melt before they attack, even the Clown Loaches swim up to get in the act :confused:

[moirai21]

i was outside mowing and found a nice big strip of moss. i pulled it up, cleaned the best i could, attempted to plant it in my 55g tank. funny things started happening...cloudy water, increasing. mouth fungus, fin rot, inactivity. i guess all my fish we plucking at it. it looked cool though! :D i'll never put strange new stuff in my tank. :D

[Adam.S]

A few years back I had a simple outdoor pond which contained a couple of goldfish.

One day it rained outside.. ALOT.. I came back home from a friends house 5 or so hours later to see all 3 goldfish on the grass (pond overflowed).

I see them motionless on the grass so I chuck them in the garbage. Later on I read that goldfish commonly will come back to their full selves if they are submerged in water even hours after they are out (as long as they remain on moist ground).

I still feel kind of bad for just throwing them in the garbage (although there was no sign of life from any of them).

[SpriteMountain]

Yea that sucks. I never knew that they could live...

[nkelmquist]

My first fish experience. At age 4 my mom bought me some goldfish for my bedroom. Well I thought I would be like mommy and use the net and take the fish out of the water (with no plan as to what to do with them next.) Well I ended up getting scared and dropping them on the floor. My mom found me screaming stomping on them, needless to say no more fish for the next ten years.

I bought a 5 gallon when I was a teenager and stocked it with a few fish. Unfortunately I bought a really cheap heater, and one day when setting the heater I turned it around one too many times thinking it would remain at the same temperature, in sum I came home from school with broiled & cooked fish at the top of my tank, exremely sad and gross.