What is the worst thing that has happened to you in the hobby?

biocubebrandon

biocubebrandon

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What is the worst thing that has happened to you in the hobby? Whether it be ich or velvet taking out your fish, a power outage, a leak in the aquarium, heater or pump malfuction, etc.

I would say when I first got into the hobby, I did not have a quarantine tank or treatments for certain things and I lost everything due to ich and could not do anything about it. Since then I quarantine everything. I also purchased a generator and have several backups for certain equipment (pumps and heaters).
 
Heater stuck on in my biocube and cooked 80% of my zoas. I no used controllers on all my tank heaters. I probably would have just shut it down for good but several people in the club helped me rebuild my zoa collection.
 
Just various mini floods from skimmer issues or rodi water overflowing, killing expensive corals by accident or losing them behind a rock and not noticing. Losing a borbonious anthias to ich (that one hurt).

nothing overall too serious other than just poor husbandry and guilt from accidentally killing an animal.
 
extended power outages from natural disasters... total crash. RIP SPS tank in my profile pic. Yes I had backup power, but too many variables over 2 weeks.
 
Monti nudis in my display. It was years ago and I lost all of my monti colonies. As a huge fan of montipora, this was particularly bad because they made up the majority of the corals in my display. I tried to fight them off but nothing worked and I pretty much left the hobby for a few years. If tearing down a system wasn't so much work, I would have quit entirely. As it was, I put minimal effort into my system and daydreamed about what I could do with the space once I finally got around to tearing the system down. Then I got a tiny piece of Idaho grape monti cap. It was mounted on a pile of 2 part epoxy and I wanted to remove it from the plug. I thought I could just "pop" if off the epoxy but it was so hard the whole thing ended up sort of shattering. I was left with a tiny, tiny piece and I glued on a fresh plug and threw it in the tank. Over the course of a year it grew and grew. I picked back up with my maintenance and corals that mad it through all of my neglect started to take off. That was back in 2017 and that one little frag got me back in.
 
I had our red sea tank pop - glass shattering sounded like a loud gun shot, and had to switch tank out. Then, a few months later, lost half the house to a disaster including the Red Sea and brand new waterbox. Lost almost everything- thousands in equipment and corals and fish, set up emergency holding tanks in basement, then lost the emergency frag tank holding most of the coral due to a seal pop. Threw everything left into a spare plastic pond we had for another project. Ran to tractor supply and got a holding trough while waiting for a new frag tank to arrive. Rebuilt the house and the system, but it was a very long process. Miss the corals and fish we lost and probably will never be able to replace, but very happy with the system we do have and all the frags and corals we have been able to grow from various club ARC members.
 
Mild case of Polytoxin poisoning. It happened to me few years back, I was moving rock around and had a minor cut on my finger. Didn’t think of it at the time. Next morning I had chills, running slight fever. It felt like really bad case of food poisoning. I had to stay in bed for a couple of days.
I know I was pretty luck with my symptoms being mild. It could have been much worse.
 
Wow I have not had any of these issues yet but I am only over a year in the hobby so there is still time ;)
Sorry to hear of some of these more serious issues, this hobby is costly enough without a full system failure.

To lighten the mood a bit, the worst thing for me so far is my wife suggesting we move the sumps down stairs to the basement and start a fish room:p
Took a month long build process and turned it into a year of projects!! But the return will be great I hope in the end.
Happy Reefing!
 
Velvet killed 2/3 of my fish in 2018. I spent probably 100 hours treating, going fallow, etc. Biggest time sink ever. Will never go through that again. QT.
 
So far velvet/ich outbreak in one tank doing TTM on 5 fish loosing 2 while at the same time treating a mysterious Brook like disease in another tank and loosing 3 fish
 
Oh boy..my time to shine!

So, as I've mentioned before, I used to have a 300+ in wall tank. I think I posted a pic of it on my build thread.

So, I'm super anal about dipping corals that come into the system. Got some cheap frag somewhere, wasn't even anything good. Didn't dip it..

Well, fast forward and I have a red flatworm situation so bad, it looks like cyano, as in I can vac them out and a few days later it looks like nothing was done. So, with a population like that, can't kill them in the tank, will ruin the water.

So, here's the plan. We (an "associate" of mine and myself) decide, we are going to pull the rock, separate the corals from said rock, and dip everything in peroxide. There is going to be loss, but at least I don't lose the entire system, right?

Yeah

So, I'm going to every store around buying all the peroxide. Meanwhile, the tank is being taken apart.

So I thought..

Other "helper" finds a bottle of Absolut Vanilla in my freezer. Proceeds to drink an entire fifth of it. Well, the tank has a closed loop, drilled through the back. It has two 2" drains and 4 of the 1" returns. Being drunk in a fish room with 3 large stock tanks and other items everywhere isn't a great idea. He trips, only thing near to catch? Of course it's the drain manifold for the closed loop.

Blows the back wall out of the tank. So he does the responsible thing? No.. his ass gets in his truck, drunk.. and leaves. I have never heard from him again..

Only about 100 gallons of water hit the floor..

So.. that was the moment I was done. As I've mentioned before, I have been out of the hobby for almost a decade..


That's the reason why..
 
90gDreams said:
....only about 100 gallons hit the floor. Glass half full kind of guy eh?
Click to expand...
Haha, could have been more, bright side and all.


Here's a neat little sidenote. So, I'm working on setting up a 90 from a friend that passed away last year. He is the one that took down the tank and took all the equipment and stuff.


About half the rock that's going in the 90, is rock from my old in wall tank. LoL
 
Well
drnecropolis said:
Haha, could have been more, bright side and all.


Here's a neat little sidenote. So, I'm working on setting up a 90 from a friend that passed away last year. He is the one that took down the tank and took all the equipment and stuff.


About half the rock that's going in the 90, is rock from my old in wall tank. LoL
Click to expand...
Well you've been around a minute so you probably have ran across Paul_B, I say you throw an empty fifth in there somewhere
 
I've had some issues that have seemed worse at the time. Most all of my fish losses have been in QT or jumpers before netting the top of the tanks. I can't say I've have any thing as bad as many here have posts but the worst for me has been Vermetid snails and/or Gelidium, better known as RTA.

I don't know if I want to laugh or cry at @drnecropolis story. How was the "Associate" able to even walk out of the house let alone drive after downing a 5th of vodka?
 
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