$150 in prizes! Best/Worst Mistakes Contest

[d3sc3n7]

Originally Posted by pearl_aqg

what's this bribe you speak of??

EXACTLY!!!!!!

[FroggyFox]

Once upon a time I had this cute little hex tank. Had to be that same 5g hex that everyone keeps mentioning! Little undergravel filter and of course pink edges. My parents kept fish when I was really little so they knew the basics. With my 5 little danios in this tank, it got really dirty and I cleaned it all out once a month or so. When I'd clean the tank. I would pour some water into a pitcher (like in the kitchen that we'd have juice in or whatever) and net my fishies and put them in there while I cleaned their tank. I'd make it sparkle and then set it back up in my room and net the little guys out of the pitcher and put them into their nice clean home. Worked out great! Except this one time... I was all finished, put the fish back in their home and stepped back to admire my handiwork. Counted my fish 1..2..3..4......um. ok they're danios they swim fast. Let's count again. 1..234...CRAP! Im missing a fish! I panicked. Ran back into the kitchen and spied him on the floor! Grabbed a spatula and scooped him up and ran into my room and threw him in the tank. Little guy was covered in hair and dust and everything but dangit he was fine!

Thats when I decided that Danios were the best fish ever I'm sure my parents just loved that I used our kitchen utensils for my fishtank activities haha

[Big Vine]

Last spring my blue crayfish bred, and I had a batch of baby blue crays (some of which were to be sent out to fellow MFTers). Right around shipping time I separated the larger ones out into a temporary container. It worked great, because I was able to sort out the males and females. Made for easy target feeding as well...just so long as I did daily water changes to keep the mess at a minimum.

One morning my wife had been getting ready for work (I was still sleeping).
I suddenly awoke to her shrieking voice telling the whole neighborhood "the crays escaped, the crays escaped!" Part of me went immediately into a determined 'cray retrieval mode,' but at the same time I feared getting a rolling-pin upside the head (my wife detested the thought of 'creepy crawlies' running amuck on the floor somewhere). Still, I felt it best to concentrate on finding them...

And of course I knew what had happened. Yup, you guessed it---I forgot to close the lid on their container after a water change! Luckily only 2 out of the 6 that were in there had escaped, but I still didn't look forward to breaking the news to the would-be recipients of these little blue-clawed MIAs. I moved every piece of furniture, including the fridge, the oven, laundry machines, sofa, TV stand. I even checked under the bed, in the closets...just about everywhere. The crays were nowhere to be found! I thought "oh, great...maybe the cat ate them," but I couldn't find any remains. It was quite the mystery...

One day, half a year later, my wife was once again doing something in the kitchen when I heard her shriek out in panic. I thought "oh boy, now what?!?" (but at least she hadn't woken me up this time). So I got up and went into the kitchen to see what was wrong. There my wife was standing there in front of the oven with one of the burners missing. Hehe...guess what she found under the stovetop?!

My poor baby blues had been Bar-B-Q'd!!!

BV

[crimsontsavo]

A old poetic reminder to make sure you stock your tank gently.
Darters and Bream just don't mix, HA!

Oh I still remember-
The day we first met-
You were trying your hardest-
To escape my well aimed net-
The day I brought you home-
Oh Flag Fin Shiners and Johnny Darters-
I smiled and laughed at your antics!
And then I brought a friend-
To share your happiness-
He was so small and sweet-
Just a little fish-
As time passed on and you all grew-
I left your side to catch a snooze-
When the morn came whizzing in-
I went to catch a glimpse of my sweetest little fins!
Oh and what I found, brings tears to my green eyes-
Your mangled bodies scattered it seemed so thoughtlessly-
And out of the corner of my eye-
With a wicked grin-
One big fat frigging Bream!

[catfishbum]

My first tank was a 20g i purchased 2yrs ago right before christmas. My girlfriend always wanted a tank, and i thought it would be cool to set a tank up christmas eve and put a nice engagement ring in the tank, then wait for her to see it. I bout 2 big Dalmation mollies, 6 neons, and 3 albino tiger barbs along with numerous decorations and an undergravel filter(stupid mistake). Xmas eve i set up the tank, put in the water (untreated......hey we have well water) droped in all the fish un-aclimated, set the heater to 80 and started her up. So the next morning she gets up and we walk to the living room and she sees the tank, walks over(its under a sheet but you can hear it) and i tell her "go ahead, lift it off". She does and find 6 dead neon tetras, 1 dead albino bard(being eaten by the mollies.............and my ring is gone. The temp in the tank was 90 degrees due to a crappy glass(not submergable but was submerged heater). She just looked at me and laughed, apparently i was wearing a look of sheer horror and shock, after all the tank and acc. cost about 200 dollars, not to mention my missing ring! I removed the dead fish and moved around the decor until i found my ring in the ship.........fixed the decor and left it alone. About a week later i finally notice there is a missing albino barb and i figured it got eaten or whatever happens in these things. My amonia was 2ppm and everything that hit my tank was dying in 2 days because i was adding dose after dose of ammo-lock(like i was told) and i added a water softner pillow(dont even know what for) and just dumped carbon strait into the tank. I decided to change water and clean gravel, so i start moving decor around......lone behold under my cave(in a hole where the mfgr. places holes to let out air) i found my missing barbs which was quite pleasant. apparently he went in and then got trapped when i flipped the decor right side up. End of story is that the tank never cycled after 3-4 months of my screwing it ip, i killed dozens of fish including multiple ick outbreaks that led to my dying everything blue with ridick and then ditched the tank................easily my most entertaining engagement story.

[Lone Wolff]

I thought I was the only one who had an escaped crawdad/crayfish story.

About 20 years ago I had a 20g high tank that unfortunately did not have a lid/canopy. I got it that way with some goldfish from a neighbor. It was my first tank, and I didn't know anything besides fish needed water and oxygen. And food.

This was before the internet, and if you wanted to actually learn about something you had to go to the library and read a book...or 12. That was just too much work. I did enough time at the library in college. I'd just wing it. After about 6 months the 3 goldfish were dead.

So I decided I wanted a 'native' tank, with species native to the area. I went out and captured a crawdad and a bluegill from a nearby pond. The crawdad was bigger than the bluegill, so I didn't worry about the bluegill eating him for a long time to come.

Still no lid on the tank, and somehow nothing had ever escaped in the subsequent months. In my blissful ignorance, I just kept the water level about 4-5 inches below the top. That'd be good enough, right?

After about a year or two, the bluegill began getting big enough to start thinking about that leggy thing at the bottom of the tank, and would occasionally peck at him ans chase him around. I started thinking about 'What next?' Do I let the fish get big enough to have a really big dinner some day? Do I let the bluegill loose? Do I let the crawdad loose?

Before I make up my mind, I notice no crawdad one morning. I figure the bluegill ate him. Oh well, at least I won't need to feed him for a day or two.

Then about a week later one morning....no bluegill. Crap. What happened? Oh there he is. Dead on the carpet. At least my cats weren't trying to eat it.

So I end up giving the tank to my nephews on the condition that my sister get them a lid for it.

Happy ending, right?

Well, fast forward about 3 years later. I'm married, and my wife and I are moving out of the 1 bedroom duplex into our new house. In the process of moving, I am packing up some 'clutter' that I had inside of a milk crate that was laying on it's side next to my bed. I used it as a nightstand in my bachelor days, and for some reason the wife hadn't gotten up enough nerve to make my get a real piece of furniture.

So guess what I find inside the clutter? Good ole' Mr Crawdad who disappeared from the 20g tank 3 years prior. The distance from the tank to my bedroom was about 60 feet. What a long, strange trip that must have been. Poor guy. I could not figure out how it never stunk up the joint, though. I know my sense of smell isn't great, but surely my two cats would have gave him away? Guess not.

Utterly strange, but I'm thankful that I discovered it and not my wife.

So the moral of the story...ALWAYS make sure you have a cover for your tank!

[Bob's_Mummy]

Okay, here it goes.

There was a time that i would have to clean out my goldfish tank everyweek. And one week after I took out the fish and cleaned the tank I realized that the only water I had was cold. ( I can't use my sink water b/c it has a high lead content) Well, I thought that it would be fine so i filled it up. I then realized that once I put the gold fish back that it was too cold. So I took the heater from my betta tank, rinsed it, and put it in the gold fish tank. After a while everything went back to normal and I never did that again.

[Macfish]

Over the weekend I took off a HOB fiter from my 55 (replaced it) and thought I'd give it a good cleaning before storage. Took it to the bath room, plugged the tub, sat it in there minus the electric part, plugged the tub, turned on the hot water and walked back to the living room for something. ... the wife wanted to play around... so ... I returned about 20 mins later to find the tub (no over flow) draining onto the floor. Enough water to drain the hot water tank had leaked out and flooded the floor. Thank goodness I bought a shop vac around christmas time and the floor has a heat vent in it, most of the water excaped to the basement (unfinished) and to the drain via a leaky heat duct. Still got most of the carpet flooded and the wood wet... its still drying lol

Just my little story.

[iapetus]

Originally Posted by Kissyboots

I got a 20g tank and put fish in it a week or so after adding the water (oh yeah, and I didn’t cycle it) There was a gap between the filter and the lid so I was worried my fish would jump out (later learned the gap was too small and my fish don’t usually jump.) So anyway, I put a towel around my filter so the gap would be closed. The next morning I discovered the towel hanging in the water, sucking up the water, and dripping it behind the tank onto the other towel under my tank, the table, and then the carpet. There was probably at least one gallon of fishy water all over my carpet. I spent most of that day emptying the tank and cleaning up what I could. I had to empty the whole thing so I could move it, wash the towel under the tank, and wipe the table which now has water marks all over it. Meanwhile, my fish spent the day in a bucket.

So, what have I learned? Never hang a towel in the tank. The water will go up and over. Nice opportunity to "megaclean" your tank though...

OK. I didn't think that I had any good stories 'til I read yours, Kissyboots! I've done the exact same thing!

I bought a really small 2.5G QT tank. I had my lyretail swordtail in there 'cause I thought he had ich. (I'm now pretty sure he had some bacterial infection.) Because the tank was small and I wanted to protect it against temperature fluctuations, I wrapped a towel around it at night. One night (actually, it was shortly before 6:00am), I heard the filter making this awful noise. I ran into the room in which the tank was located and noted that ~80% of the water was gone!!!

Turns out one of the tips of the towel was in the filter outflow. It wasn't much, but it was enough to drain the tank just like yours. J. Todd survived that little incident, but he didn't survive the infection.

[cgbender]

Ok time for me to fess up to my boneheadedness ........ and admit to my most resent set of mistakes. Story goes as follows I got a 55 gal tank from a guy that was moving away from a college town (which means I got it cheap ... errr free .. so the set up was cheap anyway,) and like a good little nerd/geek I went out to the internet and read for 6 weeks about every thing I could hoping from one post to the next asking questions. During the first week I put in sand, set up the filter and added water and chemicals; 2 weeks later plants; the next week legos ... yes legos ... a week after that i started with fish small groups at a time. Well that my friends is when the "fun" begins. First thing that happens is that I have a spike in ammonia and am told that the plants that i have are not truely aquatic so I tear them out. Next the placo dies because of whats sturred up by removing the plants,... so I freak out and do a LARGE water change and go to the LFS where they tell me that Its alright and that the water is within exceptible limits. So a couple days go by and I deside to get a new pleco ... and all the stores are closed except walmart .... yeah I know, I know. So I'm in walmart and I ask for a pleco and I hear the "fish" guy cursing under his breath. So I ask him what was going on and he said congradulations your getting a free loach. I tell him I only want the pleco, then I look in the bag and its notice that it is a small peacock eel (I have two single stripe eels) and think to my self this can't be that bad of an idea so I agree to take it figureing that my tank would be a better home than the nasty funky gravel tanks they have. Anyway I wake up the next morning to see it has developed a fungus overnight while in his new home, my tank and I think to my self "moron, you should have used a quarintine tank." So my zoooligest girlfriend is harping at me pointing out what I have done while I dig around for Fungus-be-gone and Ick-be-gone type medications to treat the whole tank... to find that I had nither under the tank in the stand so I get more snide coments and laughed at by the LFS and the girlfriend as I go to get something to try to save the little guy and prevent my whole tank from getting wiped out. I treated the little guy and the tank for a day (which he looks worse so I finaly got a QT set up today on day two of the little guys decline in health, which now looks like parisites in gills and fungus and weigh loss. So we will see what happens) So moral of the story is that nothing comes for "free", be prepaired, follow proticals, and spelling is realy bad at 4 in the morning.

I realy must be soft hearted ... I spent more on salt, medication, and the QT tank than on all the fish in my tank. It might not be enough to win but I learned the hard way about fungus and ick<AND NOT DOING SOMETHING BECAUSE ITS CONVENIENT, KNOWING THAT ITS NOT THE RIGHT THING TO DO>