I was reading Soonerfan's post about his $200 eight inch light and I thought I'd start a new thread so we can all discuss how boneheaded we are at time:
What's the worst thing you've bought for your tank that just turned out to be a waster of money, be it livestock or equipment, etc.
My latest stupid purchase was an 8x54W T5 setup that I bought used off of someone on RC. I basically wanted the fixture for the bulbs and ballasts, but I didn't realize that was ALL I was going to get from it. I was thinking that the reflector and endcaps would be salvagable. Not so much. I did get 8 bulbs of unknown age (he said they were all pretty new) and 4 ballasts, so I guess it's not ALL bad.
Another thing that I got that's just junk is a Turboflotor 1000 skimmer. I can't for the life of me get it to work, yet others love them.
I'm sure I've made more stupid equipment purchases that I'll remember later.
As far as livestock goes, I haven't had the best luck either.
I bought $200 worth of corals from someone this past summer and 90% of it is dead. About half of it looked like it died during shipping, and the rest has since died except for a couple frags. About half of the corals (hard or soft) that I buy that gets shipped doesn't make it. I also spent $60 for 7 green ricordea of which I now have 2 and they don't look that good.
For fish? Too many have passed on to the great reef in the sky to remember. I got a high-fin goby from an online retailer that was DOA. I didn't bother to even try to get dredit for it. I also have lost not one but two female mandarins. One looked like death upon delivery and made it one day, the other was this cute little bugger that lasted about 3 weeks before I never saw it again. Recently I lost a 3" Naso tang that looked fantastic for a couple days and then was dead on the bottom one morning. I actually DID call and get credit for that one. I also lost 3 clowns recently. I bought them online and when they were delivered, they were TINY. I don't think they were even big enough to know how to eat properly and I wasn't set up to feed fish who were so young.
My dumbest "I should have researched this fish better" purchase was probably a dwarf fuzzy lionfish that my wife fell in love with. It slowly withered away in my tank because there wasn't enough food.
I'm sure more will come to me! This is an expensive hobby.