$150 in prizes! Best/Worst Mistakes Contest

[cgbender]

all the towel stories and things in the tanks remind me of my mom. God bless her but shes how do we put this nicely .... absent minded she came home from work one day and put her purse on top of a 20 gal fish tank and went to watch tv. Four hours later we discover we her keys, phone and the rest of her purse floating around the tank ... the top caved in. The little frog was hopping down the hallway with the dog barking at it and the purse strap was syphoning water all over the carpet. .... Ahh memorys

[Ditanium]

Fish Boil

When I was in grade school my cousin and I set up our first fish tank. It was in the basement, the only place we were allowed to keep it, and it was fairly cold down there. My grandfather is a very accomplished breeder, and called asking how the tank was. When I told him the temperature, he suggested that we turn it up slightly for whatever fish we had (I can't even remember what we had) Our heater was a simple +/- nob control and I, having no experience whatsoever just turned it on up towards the plus +. After 15 minutes I impatiently kicked it up again. The next morning when we went to feed the fish, we found several nicely cooked fish floating at the top of the tank, and the thermometer on the side registered well above 90! Needless to say I've been paranoid about temperature ever since...


Another interesting story, though not mine, is from my grandpa who kept electric eels for a time, and came home one day to find them both flopping around on the floor after he forgot to put the bricks back on top of the aquarium (apparently they were avid jumpers!). Also, he once kept some alligators, in a large tank in his basement, and the meter readers refused to go down alone to get readings !!!

[pearl_aqg]

I have to say, I am amazed, horrified, and very entertained by the huge response to this contest and the incredible storytelling on this thread...

Though I dread having to make a decision, I will do so on March 6 - that's Thursday. You have until midnight on March 5 to post - anything posted after that will not be eligible for judgment. So if you think you've got a story to trump all these - though it's hard to imagine - now's the time to bring it on for $$ and bragging rights ...well...maybe not bragging rights...

[rebel51]

Bettas are not "pets"!!

I had a beautiful red, red betta named Jake. He lived in a 10 gallon aquarium with 6 neons. They didn't bother him and he only said "Boo!" to them once in a while.

He really enjoyed being petted. He would even come up and rub against my fingers.

Unfortunately, I didn't find out until after he died that my touching him was what actually killed him.

I have since asked questions of the employees at PetSmart, Petco, and (believe it or not) Walmart. I ask employees and other customers. I bug everybody at the fish tanks and am now learning who to believe and who is just bluffing.

Most importantly I have learned that if your timing is right, Walmart is not a bad place to go to get advice. It was a Walmart pet department manager who sent me to this site. He also refused to sell me and other customers the wrong fish at the wrong time. He kept answering our questions and asking questions of us to determine the correct advice for each of us. Furthermore, he seemed to enjoy the time spent this way.

Thanks to him I am now setting up my third 10-gallon tank for my new betta named "Gold Dust", or "Dusty" for short. Later on, I plan to add a few compatable tankmates for him.

Since I don't have the space for anything larger than a 10-gallon, I have one for fancy guppies and one for assorted tetras.

[HAAA]

Bigest mistake i ever made was when i was in 6th grade my moms friend gave us a 55g tank with a filter for a 20g tank so i got home set up everything and like a newbee whent to wal-mart got me 10 gold fish and some gravel so i got home got the hose filled the tank up and i dint put any water conditioner then i just put the goldfish within a week algea all over the glass so got a bucket and scoop the water out and with the fish still in their filled it right back up with the hose later on i found out i had everything wrong i cant belive my goldfish survide after that they grew about 10in each

[Kissyboots]

I like the engagment story.

[Jim_Leyland]

I had a 75 gallon set up last year. I had everything going good for a few months, just upgraded from a 55 so i put everything from the 55into the new tank. I was using ro water and everything.. went to the pet store to get a tang after aclimating it for the correct time i put it in the show tank, i didn't have a qt tank.. it didn't make it more than a few hours.. thought my water was bad so i did a water change, i checked with my test kits but it seemed that everything was in check, i had alot of evaporation daily and didn't have a auto top off, so i would come home from work mix up some water and salt and top the tank off, well i gave it a few weeks and tried another fish, didnt do good at all, my corals started melting away and i couldn't keep a new fish if i tried.. Still not knowing what i was doing wrong i decided to sell everything, as i allready found a buyer for the tank i was in mid process of emptying it out and i though you know what? I never tested my salt.. No one ever told me that salt didn't evaporate with water! I guess its my own stupidity but every few days i added water with salt for my top offs.. I just had a hydrometer and when i put the water in it spiked all the way to the top and im sure it would of kept going if it could have! So now i allready had the tank sold b/c i thought i couldn't keep anything and here it was just a salt issue.. oh well , live and learn eh? ..

2nd story, lol...
I was mid cleaning my 150 and instead of takin the canopy off of the tank i just slid it back on an angle so i could clean half the tank at a time. Well im pretty short and couldn't reach the bottom of my tank soooo im stanging on a bucket to get down to the bottom, the bucket starts slipping from under my feet i fall off the bucket knock my canopy down with my lights they shatter while ripping out my overflows to my sump (1" overflows, 600 gallons a hr) so now i have about 50 gallons of saltwater onto 2 powerstrips and im standing in a puddle of water getting zapped, the fuse box is in the basement but if i shut off the breaker all the lights go off and i can't see the outlets or the overflows to try and get the hoses back on them, what to do? so i grab a towel and yank the cords outta the wall while getting zapped by this time my water is down under my overflows so theres no point in trying to get the hoses back on them, i shoulda just shutt the breaker off!! *sigh*

[cdgilbert]

In the last year a friend at work gave me a good deal on his old 55 gallon tank. I talk to my kids about it and they were all excited. We setup the tank and let it run. The kids asked daily if today was the day we went fish shopping. After two weeks, we went to the local pet store where the kids picked out 5 beautiful and colorful goldfish.

I was thinking great, goldfish will be easy. After talking to the pet store people and tons of accessories later we had our fish. Everything was great for several weeks. The kids named the fish and enjoyed watching them.

One day my 8 yr old daughter told me there were a few "spiky" things on two of the fish. She was right! I couldn't figure out what caused this.

I had the hood lights working off of the light switch. I noticed when I turned it on the fish swam fast and got real active (waiting to be feed). I had several plastic plants in the tank. I figured one of the "spiky" looking plants must be hitting the fish leaving the small plastic parts in the fish. So, I quickly removed that plant.

Another couple of days went by and I noticed pretty much all my fish had spikes coming off of them. I then removed ALL my plants. It just kept getting worse... I had no idea these were parasites (they never moved and seemed very stiff).

Needless to say, by the time I got advice and purchased all the medicine for Anchor worms it was too late. I lost all my fish but one!!! The kids and I had to have funerals for them.

The moral of this story is to seek out advice to the more experienced people quickly, and don't try to figure it all out on your own. I also discovered to get second and third opinions AND join a fish forum!

[pearl_aqg]

Thanks for the great responses guys - I will announce winners later today

[pearl_aqg]

Man...I was so torn. I ended up having to ask a lot of people here to weigh in on it, and then there were lots of ties created...so this was not easy!! But after much anguish, we settled on a top 3.

So without further ado:

1st place goes to Catfishbum, for his exceedingly romantic engagement story. Ouch. Hope she said yes anyway

2nd place goes to Jim Leyland's shocking tale of fish tank electrocution. Extreme.

3rd place goes to BigToys for ruining his roommate's computer. Bringing others into your fishkeeping mistakes is a plus...

So, congratulations to the winners - I will pm you the gift certificates and will soon be posting your stories in the resources section of our site for others to marvel at and learn from! There are a number of runner-up stories that we absolutely loved and would like to use as well, so I'll be in touch with everyone

Thanks for making this one entertaining contest, and a wild success! Your openness and candor were inspiring and - I hope - a source of comfort to all who entered, and all who related.