What’s the most boneheaded thing you’ve done?

[carbasaurus]

Once made a DYI anenome catcher out of a sponge and pvc pipe (read about the technique in a magazine for getting them to come off the rock without damaging the foot) Gave the sponge a quick rinse and placed the device in the tank. Something in the sponge made my protein skimmer go bezerk and foam overflowed the skimmer and the sump. Ran that way for days!!!! Wound up placing a drain from the skimmer cup into 5 gallon jug to collect overflow. Also, the device never worked as the anenome just went to the other side of the rock

 

[BrokenReefer]

First biggest blunder: Not listening to my wife when she warned me 30 years ago to not look at the salt water fish.
Second biggest blunder: Not sealing the new hardwood floor before setting up the 125g.

Ooooooooooo, hardwood …

 

[PharmrJohn]

I made a similar mistake when I forgot to monitor the water level in my mixing tank. The heater is supposed to shut off when it’s out of water but it did not and I had a small Chernobyl incident in my basement as well.

Wow, haven't heard a Chernobyl reference in forever. I was in my early 20s when that went up in smoke. We were worried about all of Europe. It ALMOST got into the water table........

 

[BillFish Coral Lover]

Pulled out a refugium and sand bed. My tank just about died. Then I got the worst strain of dinoflagellates you can get, and that really took my tank out - and almost took me out of the hobby for good. Now, after almost two years without a tank, I’m almost up and running again.

 

[Kseamer1]

I let an aiptasia live because i thought they were cool when I first started reefing

Yep. Had a whole colony. Did same thing with bubble algae

 

[Formulator]

Moral of the story? I don’t think 16 year old undergrad students should be allowed in labs after 6 pm unsupervised… or at least not 16 year old me

Or dudes in their 20s. We got a hold of some Na metal and filled up a sink in the chem lab. Then tossed some in from a distance. BIG boom!

LOL! Speaking of unsupervised lab experiences…Late at night I used to go into a translational medicine lab where we were doing nuclear oncology work and test the potency of a certain illicit drug my friends and I dabbled in during undergrad… DUMB DUMB DUMB!

 

[PharmrJohn]

LOL! Speaking of unsupervised lab experiences…Late at night I used to go into a translational medicine lab where we were doing nuclear oncology work and test the potency of a certain illicit drug my friends and I dabbled in during undergrad… DUMB DUMB DUMB!

Did you use a mass spectrometer?

 

[Formulator]

Did you use a mass spectrometer?

Sometimes yes. Depended on the substance of interest as we had a healthy diversity of interests back then . Sometimes just formaldehyde and sulfuric acid to confirm we got what we paid for and no unintended impurities. There were a couple substances we actually wanted to avoid… like the ones endemically plaguing our country the last 10-15 years.

 

[crazyfishmom]

LOL! Speaking of unsupervised lab experiences…Late at night I used to go into a translational medicine lab where we were doing nuclear oncology work and test the potency of a certain illicit drug my friends and I dabbled in during undergrad… DUMB DUMB DUMB!

I had a colleague that used to run NMR on certain drugs so he could ensure his customers that it wasn’t laced with fentanyl. Ahhhh the silly dumb things we all have done!

 

[vetteguy53081]

 

[Timbo13]

I let vermatid snails and a gorilla crab into my tank on purpose not knowing what they were. I saw the vermatid on a hammer and thought "Cool, free filter feeder" and the crab came in a piece of acro and i thought "Cool, free crab". Took me ages to hunt down the crab and I still have vermatids in my tank. Now I look up everything if I don't know what it is!

 

[-XENOMORPH-]

Bought a used tank. Never again.

And... I took one of my dogs tranquilizers by accident. Hahahhahha. Oops. Fluffy clouds.... floating on by.......

 

[PharmrJohn]

Bought a used tank. Never again.

Ugh! Did that too. As you said, Never Again.

 

[Formulator]

Ugh! Did that too. As you said, Never Again.

I bought a used FRESHWATER tank. Drilled it myself and fabricated the overflow from a sheet of acrylic I got at home depot. Sounds like a mistake but… its still my current tank almost 9 years later!

 

[Vivid Creative Aquatics]

I one time during a sump maintenance session , closed the drains to keep more water in the display tank while I worked. Needless to say, I forgot to open them back up once I was done. I flipped the switch to fire up the return pump, and almost walked away, but I had a nagging feeling I forgot something.

At that moment, I see the display tank rapidly filling up...

At first i was confused what i was seeing. But then it hit me - the drains!

I start to scramble to get the pump turned off and open the drain but i'm undecided as to which one to do first - I'm panicking a little bit.

Just as the water is about to breach the top of the display tank i open the drain, but its still filling (the pump is at 100%).

Just as a "small" amount of water sheets over top edge along the entire length of the my 6ft tank, i get the pump shut off.

Total disaster, mostly averted.

I felt pretty dumb... :-/

 

[Planted Reef]

My wife often points out my most boneheaded action ever: I was 17, clearing grass from a gas lawnmower with it running. I was surprised a finger could actually slow it down.

I did the exact same thing. Got to see the bone in my finger! I actually almost passed out

 

[victoria casella]

I let an aiptasia live because i thought they were cool when I first started reefing

Did the same! And I’ve been fighting them for years! I hate killing anything… but I’m over that now!

 

[NanoNana]

I got into reefing thinking it would be a safe relaxing hobby So far I've flooded the house, almost burned it down overflowing a tank onto a power strip, and I fell off a chair when I stuck my hand in a tank that had 50 volts from leaking powerheads. Wonder what tomorrow will bring lol

Oooo ooo I did this! Got water all in a power strip. That buzzing and crackling noise was awful! Did I think about electrocution or burning the house down? Ofc not. My brain was like (expletive) how am I going to run the tank until I go get a new strip?!?

 

[NanoNana]

Well, just yesterday I tried to burn my house down by leaving my heaters and a pump I had in my (dry) saltwater barrel plugged into a timer that I thought I had turned off by using a kill switch that only turned the power off temporarily. The timer turned on at 9:00am yesterday morning and I received the text from my wife by 9:20 yelling at me about the noxious odors coming from the basement.

Not that I haven't heard that complaint before....

Did this too….

 

[Bruttall]

I used salt water for my ATO, before realizing Salt does not evaporate. I got to about 1.030 before realizing it.

The other bonehead thing I seem to not be able to stop doing is telling people the TV is not there to INFORM but rather to MISLEAD, stop watching any news affiliated with NBC. (btw that's all of them, NBC/Universal/Disney is owned by COMCAST and they control 90% of the Global Media, including abc, cbs, cnn, fox, etc. it's all fake.

See, there I go again