Share Your Mistakes Here

[Misha111]

My worst mistake but out of ignorance.
When I was 9 (38 years ago lol) I won a goldfish at the fair. One of those games where if you can get the ping pong ball into a goldfish bowl, you get the bowl and the fish. Bought the fish home and stuck him in the bowl. No chemicals, no acclimatisation, no cycling. Cleaning him out was a 100% water change and the gravel etc being completely rinsed out.
With all the info we have now, it seems cruel, but I loved that little guy, he started my love affair with fish and he finally passed away when I was at college.

 

[Delapool]

Figures, someone starts a mistake thread and there I go forgetting to plug in filters and heater after a wc, tank dropped 10 degrees in 10 hours!

Yikes, I take it is winter over there?

 

[Brookster123]

Yup, my heaters are very loud so I don't run them as often as I should, needless to say my apt gets cold at night..

 

[aqnix11]

Where to start? Well 3 yrs ago I went to walmart and bought 3 fancy goldfish and 1 small random goldfish (I think it was just a feeder) and stuck them all in one of those little corner 1 gallon tanks. I didn't even buy the right water treatment (bought clear water instead of start right or w/e) and they all ended up dead in 20 minutes. Then I got a betta (2nd betta, first one died in less than a week from infection) and he lasted for 3 yrs. He lived in the little 1 gallon most of the time. I rarely did water changes (maybe once a week at best) and when I did, I did 100%. I was even using dish soap for a while. -_-

I knew he needed more room, just didn't have the cash to buy a bigger set up. But later I did end up getting a 10 gallon for my birthday. I ended up plopping my betta & an apple snail in there. I didn't cycle it, never EVER did water changes (only top offs). The apple snail died 2 months later. At first I thought the betta tormented it to death....he did eat its eye thread thingys. Anyway, now I'm pretty sure it's because my nitrogen cycle was all crazy.

And now my latest error? Well this week I bought an automatic feeder for my fish (going on Christmas holiday soon). Problem is the feeder is bulky & requires me to leave my hood partially open. This is problematic because I have a psychotic cat. I don't know why I thought it would be okay. Anyway, tonight I noticed that one of my little rasbora has a piece of glitter stuck in its gill. This is likely from the glitter on my tree skirt which my cat likes to play with. My guess is he was sticking his paws in the tank. So anyway, guess what I decide to do? I decide to try and extract the little piece of glitter with a thimble. Um. Yeah, it didn't work out. It looks like I may have harmed the little fish more. There's redness and URG. I don't know what I was thinking.

 

[Toad]

It sounds amazingly stupid, but growing up we had well water and had all sorts of native fish in tanks, plus the occasional Oscar my stepdad had ( they got hole in the head because we never did water changes, just topped off).

Flash forward to me at eighteen (after some fun with a few bettas in bowls) and my first tank in a new house. After figuring out what kind of fish I wanted on the web I set the tank up. After I'd killed some tadpoles and a few guppies i went back online, which is when I learned about this thing called dechlorinater... it was literally something we'd never used because our water was the same as creek water.

Cycling came after more problems lol.

Most repeated mistake is forgetting about a water change on the middle of one and hearing all that water suddenly patter over the edge of the bucket.

 

[Animal1402]

First tank at 16 years old + LFS advice = a hell of a lot of dead, dying and monstrously aggressive fish. Nuff said

 

[Carnifex]

First tank at 10. Knew nothing. Nothing. 10 gal with 2 gold fish, 4 mollies, 8 neon tetras, and 2 blue gouramis. They lived with my stupidity for five years...years. Fm. Then they all died when i moved from Illinois to Ohio. That's when i became an addict and taught myself about the hobby. Lol I'm a better keeper now.

 

[cooperturner]

I used to use tap water and always kill the comets but have no idea why they died

 

[SandyCheeks]

I thought I followed directions perfectly but clearly I was wrong and must have used too much bleach when recharging purigen. I soaked it in prime and water for over a day and rinsed it out for what seemed like a very long time because I wanted to be extra safe. Then I used more prime but even with that, in a short while several Endlers died so I quickly took the purigen out and did massive water change after massive water change. The surviving Endlers had red gills for days! I felt horrible! I haven't used Purigen since but it worked great before the bleach incident.

Had the same thing happen. Lost my cycle in 2 tanks after using bleach and prime to regenerate Purigen. Haven't used Purigen since either.

 

[twiddlemuffin]

Turned off my filter with the intent to clean the gunk off of it, did my water change, forgot to clean the filter, when I turned it back on it fired all of the gunk all over my tank. -___- I've been doing 30-50% water changes every day to get rid of it all and the cloudiness.

 

[hennaartist]

A few years ago, I had heard that aquarium salt is helpful with so many things in the aquarium and great for fish. So, I put the correct amount in my aquarium. I didn't think about my large mystery snails until I found them dead.

Last year, I found this great piece of quarts at a flea market, and knew quarts was safe in the aquarium. A month later all of my fish died. The water parameters were fine, so I was stumped. Then when breaking down the tank to clean it all thoroughly, I noticed weird bubbles I could scrape off the quarts. It apparently was a varnish they had put on the quarts.

Now I do a lot more research and inspection before adding things to my tank.

 

[Brookster123]

Had a good one last night, brought home a couple hexazona barbs and my leopard Pleco ( woo) it was kind of late, instead of doing it right I started to drop acclimate the Pleco in the bag, thing is my qt tank is currently on top of my fridge, the bag was leaning on the tank, I turned my back for one second and naturally the bag tips a bit cascading water down the front of my fridge( poopy Pleco stress bag water) Normally would not be a big deal, seeing as my gf keeps a million important things on the front of the fridge it almost got me a one way ticket out of that relationship. :hangs head in shame:

 

[Candi1990]

My biggest was letting the lady at the fish tank give me one snail. It accidentally got in the bag when she scooped up the fish and she said it was harmless so I thought nothing of it. It wasn't long before i had a million of those annoying little things. I had to ditch the gravel, do a 100 % water change and recycle the tank.

 

[Brookster123]

My biggest was letting the lady at the fish tank give me one snail. It accidentally got in the bag when she scooped up the fish and she said it was harmless so I thought nothing of it. It wasn't long before i had a million of those annoying little things. I had to ditch the gravel, do a 100 % water change and recycle the tank.

Next time just get a couple assassin snails! Now I ask for snails at the store haha

 

[Candi1990]

Next time just get a couple assassin snails! Now I ask for snails at the store haha

What are they???? What's the benefit?

 

[TXaggie]

I would say assassins were on my list of (many) mistakes over time....I bought a couple to deal with ramshorns and they multiplied like rabbits in my tank. Now I have an assassin snail problem, and I'm still picking out those suckers whenever I find them. They killed my lovely adult mystery snail back when there was a ton of them in my tank. Now I only find them occasionally, thankfully and all my other snails are fine...

What else, hmmm. Buying a fish without doing a ton of research first. Emperor tetras that I bought bullied everything in my tank, ate the rili shrimp I tried to add within a day of them being in the tank....ugh. Also, the very first fish I bought for my tank after doing a fishless cycle were beautiful Gertrude's spotted blue eyes. I had them for about 6 months, added another couple fish from a different LFS and they were carrying some kind of disease....lost all my beautiful rainbows (and the new fish of course) to a fluffy white spot disease....sigh. Now I'm more careful about what livestock looks like when I buy and where it comes from.

Oh, and thinking a rescape of my tank would be easy. Ha!

 

[Fibsog]

I once got an endler guppy. He was tiny. Needless to day he got very stressed and began to lay in gravel and hide. Soon he was gone. His name was fluval.

 

[molliwopp]

My one and only mistake was buying a 200quid or 330dollar custom made 3D background that i never used because it took up too much space and didnt match my cichlids habitat or the decor i ended up wanting to use.

Which reminds me that i need to get it up on ebay!

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Aquarium Advice mobile app

 

[venymae]

Probably never learning to cycle until many fish down the road. (Why didn't you explain this to me dad?!)

 

[teagybear]

2 gallon tank with 2 comets and an African clawed frog... Never again...