War Stories Wanted/Needed!

[MizTanks]

Let's have em you people! I NEED to hear your *WAR STORIES*. What happened when you did this, that and the other thing that caused your tank to turn evil on ya!

[Sir Patrick]

A few months ago, I had a good sand bed go bad!!

For the first year I used tap water in my tank, had some fish die while out of town, and generaly didnt keep up on tank husbandry as I should have. More of the same for the second year, but the tank was doing great!

I had a DSB in the tank that was functioning great at keeping my nitrates low.....Till it got full.....

About the time it unknowingly got saturated with nastiness, I finally hooked up my RO filter, and started using ro water. I also started playing around with the flow in my tank and gave some sps peices a try, because as far as I was aware- everything was great! Falling powerheads and a DSB saturated dont mix.

Everytime a powerhead would fall, it would blow away the sand to the bottom glass. Every time this happened I would get a nitrate spike of over 50-75 ppm!!! All the SPS went instant brown, even the zoas colors went drab and ugly! This happened weekly, till I got completely sick of it and removed the sand bed.

Moral of the story- maintain those sand beds! They are a disaster waiting to happen if you do not!

No one else has a disaster to share???? I have many- dont be shy!

[thefishgirl]

I once cooked a batch of baby Banggai cardinals. I had added a little powerhead to their tank. I left the flow alone for a few hours, but I felt it was a little too much for them. I cut back on the water flow and a few hours later, apparently the pump heated up due to less flow. My water temp went way up. I didn't react quickly enough. They died about 4-5 hours later. I was so bummed! So that's my lesson learned! Amazing how quickly something can go wrong with only 3 gallons of water.

[dentdominator]

The other day I was soaking all my tunzes and magnets in a 5 gallon bucket of vinegar and when I go to pull them out. I had 2 magnets snap inside the bucket and one magnet was over the top of my fingers and the other was under my fingers on the same hand.

I couldn't pull them apart with my life or the other hand, instant pain, going nuts, walking in circles etc. There was nothing I could do to pull them apart with the other hand.

I knew my neighbor was home and I ran over to his house with a screw driver and he saved my day.

The pain felt like if an elephant stepped on to your hand.

I wish I had a picture of it.

Now, that's a war story for ya !!

[Sir Patrick]

This thread needs new life! Lets here some more war stories!!


I didnt adjust the water flow through my prizm protein skimmer after a big, long over due top off one time....caused the collection cup to overflow, in the middle of the night! Just so happened, my power strip was directly underneath it!!! I had no drip loops either...:embarrased:


Yup- FIRE!!!!!

It was about 4am. Smoke alarm was blaring!! I had my stand fully noise insulated w/ styrofoam. Tons of smoke. Couldnt see a couple inches in front of my face! Was terrible!!

Wife went off the wall!! Freaked right the heck out!! I got her and my daughter out of the apt- and headed back in to fire fight! Got the fire out pretty quick. Lucky I didnt electricute myself....tossed 3 gallons of fresh water on the elctric fire.....was 4am- what an I say?? :duh:

Lost all my water pumps, my heater, power filter, skimmer, had to give away all my corals and fish, before I went to work that very same morning.

Tank was OK, beleive it or not! Its running right next to me as I type. Stand needed some work. My MH lights made it unscathed. My wife told me- you will never have another tank in our house again!!! This was about 4 years ago, lol! ;)

Moral of the story- double check your equipment after a top off, or any other big changes to your tank- and always use drip loops!! Never leave a powerstrip where it has the slightest chance of getting wet!!