Justin
Fri, 5th Jun 2015, 09:40 AM
I saw a thread like this on another forum and wanted to bring it over to MAAST. We all started as newbies at point or another, what are the top 5 mistakes you made in this hobby?
Quarantine
In my haste to get that really bad *** piece of coral or fish into my newly setup tank, I failed to properly QT my fish and corals. I wasn't bad all the time, sometimes I would dip with Coral Rx or Bayer my corals but with fish, I automatically added them into my system. As luck would have it, I would lose fish due to them not being at the right weight and health, or bring in some nuance pests ranging from Vermited snails, brown flatworms and bryopsis.
Buying cheap
Let's face it, this hobby is not for the light of wallet! Between buying salt, rocks, pumps, skimmers and lights/bulbs, you've already invested a nice vacation worth of your hard earned money into the hobby and you haven't even turned on the switch and added water to your glass box! In an effort to save some money, I made the mistake of buying cheap products like cheap pumps or DIY some of my stuff to include building my own stand. It can be a gamble but in my experience, I ended up paying more in the long run. Back when Petco had the $1/gallon sale, I scored on a 40 breeder. Awesome tank for just $40 bucks, but I needed a stand to hold it. I decided to make my own and after the hundreds I spent on wood, tools to include saws and drills that I didn't have or were cheap and bought on Craigslist, I could have purchased a used 100 gallon on one of the for sale forums
Not Researching Fish compatibility
Granted that I tend to do a bit of research on my livestock choices, I really don't think there is cure for me on that impulse purchase of a fish that you see in a fish store. I can recall buying a Long Nose Hawkfish because my wife thought he was "cute" and had a mohawk, let alone follow her everywhere in the store tank. Little did I know that the little red Punk rocker would steal food from my corals and other fish's mouths. The last straw was when I saw my Rainford Goby in its mouth!
DIY LED light fixture
Early in my reef career, I knew that I wanted to go with LED's after talking to two of my friends whom I respect in the Reef Community. The problem was that going back to my earlier point about going cheap, I decided to try my hand at building my own LED fixture complete with cooling fans that turned on at the same time as the lights came on. My design was beautiful and I felt my soldering was impeccable, sadly I quickly realized that I had no clue what I was doing and even though my super awesome LED fixture was on "par" with the Ecotech Radions (I thought so at least) it wasn't producing the right amount of par and I was consequently losing SPS left and right. I didn't know what was causing it until I borrowed a PAR meter and my dreams at building a light fixture were shattered
Getting Caught up in the latest Trend
This one hit me pretty hard as I lost some truly beautiful pieces due to my idiot self following the latest trend without doing my research. It all started when I flew to California for a job interview. To kill the time, I decided to do what I usually do in a new and strange place, I look up local fish stores and see what they have and use in their tanks. This particular store had three truly epic reef system that were utilizing Bio Pellets in them. Like an idiot I believed everything the employee said at full value and purchased one for myself and brought it back to use on my own reef tank. Well long story short, I was running the reactor as well as utilizing a dual reactor of GFO and GAC at one cup each for a 40 breeder. Regardless to say, I was stripping my tank water so much that my SPS corals were slowly STN'ing from the lack of nutrients in the water. Talking to my friends about it, I decided to follow the K.I.S.S. principle (Keep it Simple Stupid) and my tank and corals are all extremely happy for it
So those are my 5 mistakes (of many) that I have made in this hobby. What are yours?
Quarantine
In my haste to get that really bad *** piece of coral or fish into my newly setup tank, I failed to properly QT my fish and corals. I wasn't bad all the time, sometimes I would dip with Coral Rx or Bayer my corals but with fish, I automatically added them into my system. As luck would have it, I would lose fish due to them not being at the right weight and health, or bring in some nuance pests ranging from Vermited snails, brown flatworms and bryopsis.
Buying cheap
Let's face it, this hobby is not for the light of wallet! Between buying salt, rocks, pumps, skimmers and lights/bulbs, you've already invested a nice vacation worth of your hard earned money into the hobby and you haven't even turned on the switch and added water to your glass box! In an effort to save some money, I made the mistake of buying cheap products like cheap pumps or DIY some of my stuff to include building my own stand. It can be a gamble but in my experience, I ended up paying more in the long run. Back when Petco had the $1/gallon sale, I scored on a 40 breeder. Awesome tank for just $40 bucks, but I needed a stand to hold it. I decided to make my own and after the hundreds I spent on wood, tools to include saws and drills that I didn't have or were cheap and bought on Craigslist, I could have purchased a used 100 gallon on one of the for sale forums
Not Researching Fish compatibility
Granted that I tend to do a bit of research on my livestock choices, I really don't think there is cure for me on that impulse purchase of a fish that you see in a fish store. I can recall buying a Long Nose Hawkfish because my wife thought he was "cute" and had a mohawk, let alone follow her everywhere in the store tank. Little did I know that the little red Punk rocker would steal food from my corals and other fish's mouths. The last straw was when I saw my Rainford Goby in its mouth!
DIY LED light fixture
Early in my reef career, I knew that I wanted to go with LED's after talking to two of my friends whom I respect in the Reef Community. The problem was that going back to my earlier point about going cheap, I decided to try my hand at building my own LED fixture complete with cooling fans that turned on at the same time as the lights came on. My design was beautiful and I felt my soldering was impeccable, sadly I quickly realized that I had no clue what I was doing and even though my super awesome LED fixture was on "par" with the Ecotech Radions (I thought so at least) it wasn't producing the right amount of par and I was consequently losing SPS left and right. I didn't know what was causing it until I borrowed a PAR meter and my dreams at building a light fixture were shattered
Getting Caught up in the latest Trend
This one hit me pretty hard as I lost some truly beautiful pieces due to my idiot self following the latest trend without doing my research. It all started when I flew to California for a job interview. To kill the time, I decided to do what I usually do in a new and strange place, I look up local fish stores and see what they have and use in their tanks. This particular store had three truly epic reef system that were utilizing Bio Pellets in them. Like an idiot I believed everything the employee said at full value and purchased one for myself and brought it back to use on my own reef tank. Well long story short, I was running the reactor as well as utilizing a dual reactor of GFO and GAC at one cup each for a 40 breeder. Regardless to say, I was stripping my tank water so much that my SPS corals were slowly STN'ing from the lack of nutrients in the water. Talking to my friends about it, I decided to follow the K.I.S.S. principle (Keep it Simple Stupid) and my tank and corals are all extremely happy for it
So those are my 5 mistakes (of many) that I have made in this hobby. What are yours?