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Fishy Secrets Revealed: The Pros’ Most Embarrassing Stories

2K views 4 replies 4 participants last post by  CADuke 
#1 ·

We all have those forehead-slapping moments when we make a stupid mistake… and we hope no one finds out about them. Hey, not to worry – even the most seasoned of fish pros have made a few missteps.

“There is a steep learning curve in this hobby.” I remember being told this wise piece of information by a resident fish guru of aquariumforum.com when I first joined the site. She was so right. In fact, I don’t really think the learning ever stops. This hobby is full of science, chemicals, diseases, species, and a million new things to learn every day… or so it seems to me. With all of this information, a lot of mistakes are made. Some are big, some are small, and some are laughable (at least, after the fact).

Not terribly long after I had gotten a basic handle on the hobby, I set up a 75 gallon tank. One day, a wonderful surprise awaited me – there were newly laid eggs in my tank. I didn’t know where they came from, so I took a picture. I posted the pic on the aquariumforum.com chat room, where everyone was perplexed as to where they came from. No one knew what would lay these eggs, or what they might be. The suggestion was to pull them out and attempt to hatch them in a smaller tank so I could watch closely.

I pulled the eggs and waited. And waited. And waited.

As photos around of my mystery spawn were making the rounds in the chat room, another member of the forum cracked the code. It turns out they weren’t eggs at all, but rather the pellets inside the osmocote capsules (plant food) he had sent me and that I had buried in the substrate.

To this day, five years later, I still get asked if my fertilizer ever hatched. Fish people do have a sense of humor!

Inspired by my own stupidity, I asked around some of my fish circles to see what other embarrassing things they’ve done when keeping fish. Because I promised to keep them all anonymous, they were happy to share. Here are some of my favorites:

“One of the filters on my big tank suddenly stopped working. I called the Fluval customer service center because it was brand new. I tried everything they suggested, but still nothing. I found out what the problem a few days later when Piddles the cat sauntered by. It turns out that she would walk across the power strip, and turned on a timer that kept turning the filter off. I felt like an idiot. My husband also had a fish brain fart. While we were troubleshooting the filter problem, he was wiggling the impeller/motor and didn’t realize it worked like a cam lock. WHOOSH – water everywhere!”


“I once cried my heart out because I found my Pom Pom crab dead in my reef. When I took him to the pet store to find out what killed to my dearly departed pinching friend, I was told that it was only a molt.”

“I almost froze my fish by lowering the temperature 12 degrees without realizing it. I didn’t notice until all my corries started going belly up on the bottom. Two gallons of 120 degree water later, and they were all fine.”


Many others had chimed in at my request with basic answers that I think occur at least once in every fish keeper’s lifetime. Things like draining the tank without unplugging the heater, which results in the tank shattering, to leaving the lid off of a tank and having fish jump to their doom. We’ve all made mistakes, and if we can’t learn from them and laugh at them, then the hobby would be pretty boring, wouldn’t it?

Do you care to ‘fess up? Chime in below in the comments with your most embarrassing moment as a fish keeper.

Summer Davis is the mom of three kids, four dogs, and several tanks of fish. She boasts a passion for all animals, whether they are in the water or on land. This fish aficionado has kept many different species in her time, but holds a special place in her heart for wild and domestic bettas. When she’s not talking about fish, Summer “spins” her extra time as the director of a baton twirling organization.
 
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#2 ·
Mine is actually still really recent:
This past weekend, I vacuumed the gravel in my 29 gallon BN Pleco breeder, as many of the plants died due to losing a good quality light and putting on a temporary, terrible one. I sucked out all the dead plant matter, and many pest snails that have taken to breeding like rabbits before Easter. This morning, when I went out to feed them, I saw a single baby BN swimming along the bottom of the tank. I shined a light in the caves (have done this many times, but have NEVER seen eggs, though I have had 2 clutches, 1 in each of my 2 tanks), and saw more snails, but no more baby BN's. I don't know if only 1 hatched, since this is their first brood, only 1 survived since I didn't know they had even laid eggs much less hatched so I did not give them their First Bites, or if I sucked out a bunch of them over the weekend :crying:
 
#3 ·
Hmm, I gotta think about this..... I once had a 29 gallon, and a 20 gallon sitting on opposite corners of the room. I decided to switch them because one was a bit too wide for where it was. I then proceded to move the 20 gallon out of the way, the stand it was on slid easily across the carpet(it was a metal desk) so I could easily push the other stand where the 20 gallon sat before. Little did I know that the stand ( a CRAPPY kit bought from a chain) would want to make it hard for me to move it. the wood dragged across the carpet making it hard to move. It took about 3 hours moving that stand.( I obviously took the water out before I moved it.) I think it was a few weeks later when I had came into my room to get a Dr.Pepper when...There was a huge crack running diagonally across the 29 gallon tank!!!!!.
To this day, I am certain that it was the stress of moving the stand that made the tank crack.....

Don't think I'm stupid because of this. I'm just young. 15 to be exact.(14 when this happened). I will do many stupid things later in my years of fish keeping that will follow, and I will learn from those mistakes as well....
 
#4 ·
I've done similar. Last tank I broke was one I had just gotten. I was driving it home, with it in the bed of the truck, and someone was riding my bumper, so I took a turn a little too fast. Made it from one city to the next (about 30 miles), only to have it slide across the bed of the truck and crash into the wheel well 2 blocks from my house :frown2:
 
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