Your most disgusting used aquarium story ever?

[snapcrackler]

I have been buying (and selling) used aquariums since I was a kid.

Of all those purchases, there were a few... scary ones. I was wondering what stories you might have as well?

With that, I'll offer up my scariest used aquarium story of all..... bleagh..

A friend of a friend of a friend etc. mentioned that his brother in law had a used 55 gallon aquarium he wanted to sell for super cheap. $30 for everything incl. lights, tank, pumps, etc. So I jumped on that deal.

The friend that was closest to us, Bob, said they would be happy to grab the tank on their way into town, since they knew the town where this guy's brother in law lived and they would be going through there on their way back from a wedding.

So Bob and his wife rolled into my driveway, with the tank in the backseat of their (brand new) vehicle, right next to their nice clothes and stuff from a wedding they had been to last night. I covered him on the cash, unloaded the tank, chatted a bit and bid them farewell.

I washed the tank outside in the driveway with vinegar and water and then dried it all off and brought it inside to the lower level of my house. Later that day I went down and carefully inspected the tank for cracks or breaks.

But what's this, was that a bug? Thousands of live bugs?? Crammed up inside the plastic frame? I thought I washed this thing!

Closer inspection revealed thousands of little to medium sized bugs, and also little "pouch" things. They were all roving around and staying tight up under the trim. I could see 'em through the backside of the glass. I got the creeps and picked up the 55 with everything in it and hauled it outside. The bugs were crammed almost solid under BOTH frames, top and bottom, in EVERY conceivable spot.

So I called my best bud Mike (who was then working for a local exterminator, and now owns his own pest control service called Hawkeye Exterminating) and described these little friends.

Yep, they were cockroaches and egg casings, he said.

I was pissed off big time that this tank had been in my house, and threw the SOB in the burnpile near the garden, along with the equipment. Out of morbid curiosity, I unscrewed the back panel of the 48" flourescent striplight and when I lifted it off, hundreds of large cockroaches poured out.

About three gallons of gasoline and a very large, very hot fire later, I called up Bob and told him he better check his new truck and clothes and stuff. I was not the only one that was mad as hell after that. I got my money back too.

Well I burned that aquarium to the ground. Mike came over and exterminated the whole house just in case, and put down monitoring devices everywhere. Fortunately since it hadn't gotten dark around the tank yet, they never ventured away from their little home, and my house was not invaded.

Turns out that the aquarium guy's house was a total disaster inside, infested with cockroaches (go figure). He had apparently hosed the tank down prior to having it picked up and set it outside, so the Bob never knew of the horrors that were inside the house.

 

[ReefRaff]

Thats is disgusting

 

[Salt4Us]

ewwww that gives me the creeps!!

 

[MACATUA]

I HATE Roaches! I would have had a heart attack and died!

 

[William]

and I was going to post about a 10gal used that had thick mineral deposts on the glass... :? 8O :?

 

[Sati]

Oh my god, nothing tops that. I've never even seen a cockroach. My worst experience with a bug is reaching into a open bag of yummy milano cookies and finding a small spider. I screamed my bloody head off. My BF and mother still talk about it because they thought I'd been shot in the head, or the victim of some really terrible crime and came running.

 

[Allivymar]

Oh ewwwww. That is TRULY grotesque!

Hubby says the cockroaches were likely keeping the tank together tho

 

[snapcrackler]

I was hoping someone would have a grosser story to make me feel better :? LOL

Thank God the bugs didn't leave the tank, man. I was paranoid for a month afterwards checking around everywhere in the house with flashlights, checking the monitor things etc.

Never found a single one

cmon someone has to have a grosser story?? (I hope)

 

[cj10488]

cmon someone has to have a grosser story?? (I hope)

I think you might be the only one.. Nothing can really top that..

James

 

[stresco]

That is really gross man... I know exactly how you feel. I got sent out of town for a few months for work and had to rent furnature from RentACenter and every thing was crawling with roaches. I dragged all the furnature out to the front yard (in the rain) couches, bed, bedframe, kitchen table, chairs, everything and called them in to pick up that nasty sh*t. Then i bombed that apartement with my stuff in it 3 times. Ended up sleeping in a motel for 2 days because of it.

 

[shawmutt]

As a kid, we were so poor we could only afford smooth peanut butter. If we wanted crunchy peanut butter, we just left the jar open on the counter overnight, got up in the morning, and stirred all the cockroaches right into the peanut butter .

But seriously, I lived with my family in a cockroach infested apartment for a long time, and when my family finally moved out of the apartment into a house, the cockroaches came with us, in electronic equipment, cardboard boxes, and everything else. When I moved out of my house at 18 I brought NOTHING with me but the clothes on my back.

I'm digressing. Most disgusting used aquarium story ever. When I first got my father-in-law's aquarium, he fell out of the hobby years ago. My wife told me how he used to be--a dozen or so tanks in his basement and many many fish. The only tank he had left was a 30 gallon. There was java fern choking up the whole aquarium, and only a lonely 10 year old angelfish left. The light didn't work, and his maintenance consisted of dumping a bit of food in the tank once in a while and topping the water off every few months. I guess you could say that's what got me back in the hobby. I bought a new light, and started going over to his house and taking care of the fish tank. Finally my father-in-law just gave me the tank. I brought it home, set it up, and that angelfish stayed alive for another 6 months (I must have been paying too much attention to it ). When he died, and after a failed attempt with gouramis, I decided to make my black water biotope.

The first thing I had to do was remove the UGF. Now, keep in mind that this tank had been running for 10 years. My father-in-law couldn't remember the last time he had a working air pump. Long story short, the removal of that filter went like this: ... :| ... :? ... 8O ...

.

It was the single most disgusting thing I have ever done in my life...my whole apartment smelled like a cesspool for a week after. To this day I will try my best to steer people away from those types of filters.

 

[plkdb]

Not a tank story, but cockroach story none the less. When I moved into our house on base, I would sit on the porch at night relaxing. Every night I would notice 2-3 palmetto bugs on the side of the house. I killed them, and the same thing would happen every night. Eventually it became a game to kill them, (they smartened up, and learned I was stalking them). One night I walked around the backside of the house by our a/c unit which is on our neighbors side. Theres a little hole in the ground by it about the size of a chipmunk hole. I saw about 20 around and in the hole, so I killed the ones that were outside of it, and used my foot to close the hole.........the hole went down about 2 feet! It was like a little sinkhole, I just about fell in. I spent the next two hours chasing down the bugs pouring out of it, and on my house and in the yard. The best part is the neighbor comes home, sees what I`m doing I told her about it, she tells her husband that I`m digging a big hole in their yard Everytime it rained for the next few weeks, anytime I would put dirt in the hole, and think it was filled, the rain would wash it down. The hole was atleast 2 feet deep, and about 2 1/2 feet across.