I guess I’ll get the stupid guy ting going.

I have this HO T5 striplight which I placed directly on the glass tops of my fish aquarium. AT one point the ballast went out and it was replaced by a Fulham workhorse ballast. Well I didnt realize the Workhorse 8 was wired to drive the T5 tubes at VHO level and the tubes became so hot that they cracked the glass tops, all three of them with which it was in contact.

Hindsight is always 20/20: I shouldnt have placed the striplight right on the glass and I should have caught that VHO level wiring and rewired it for HO since it is only a fish aquairum.

Within the first month of my tank i had a pretty unorganized cabinet. wires, cables, and tubes all over the place. I also had a mean habit of taking shortcuts while I was trying to tidy everything up a bit, that shortcut was of course not to turn anything off.
There were a few times when i would give an accidental tug on my return line tubing, if it was too hard of a tug the hose would pop off the pump and leave a gushing fountain inside of my cabinet, onto me, and if I was lucky not onto any wiring.

But sometimes i was not lucky, and drip loops only work for drips, not for geysers . Best case scenario I just had a mess to clean up, worst case scenario was I would rush to either unplug my main pump, or turn off the power strip (which ever my random fury could do first) and only suffered some minor shocks.

Lessons learned, a clean organized cabinet is less shocking!

oh did i mention that I once use GE Silicon II to make a refugium? I had both bottles in my garage, 1 was for my tank, 2 was for my bathroom thats being redone. I knew the differences, knew that 2 was poisonous. I totally forgot this when i was placing the ballasts in my 20 G fuge tank.

after less then 24 hours I noticed my red mushrooms, normally HUGE guys, were a tad wilted. Then saw my acro was a bit whiter then usual. I instantly knew I had used the wrong stuff and was killing my tank!

After I unplumbed the fuge, I did a quick 80% water change and the next day my shrooms were huge again, but sadly I had lost my acro.

Waited 3 weeks for a remote controlled RGB LED spotlight to arrive from overseas. My wife was out of town when it arrived so I had to wait to set it up and play with it until after the little one went to bed. After she FINALLY stopped crying and fell asleep I ran downstairs to my tank room and plugged in the light. I was holding the bulb in one hand over my tank and when I reached down to pick up the remote to turn it on and finally SEE it in action, I dropped it into the tank and ruined the circuitry.

So basically, I managed to completely destroy it before ever being able to turn it on.

Its 2004. Nanocustoms is a whopping 2 months old and I’m working out of my living room (a fully non gf sanctioned activity). I’m building a customers hood when the phone rings.

I set what im working on down so i can get to the call.

A funny thing about PC ballasts. If you energize them and dont have a lamp plugged into them, they will hold a charge until the circuit is completed.

I hang up the phone, pick up a bulb to install it into a socket and forget that my hands are grabbing the loose end of the ballast.. .POOOF. The lamp lights through my body and leaves 2 burn marks on the way out.

Lesson learned.

I had a Long Spine Urchin in a 55 gallon trash can I was using to cure some live rock/live sand. While working on the flow pump, the return hose slipped out of the bracket causing a massive sand storm in the trash can. Going Braille, I reached in for the return line and instead found the Urchin. Ran one spine all the way through the middle finger of my right hand.

Nothing too bad but I added MELAFIX to my tank without reading the instructions and left home for dinner – came back to a room full of bubble bath – I didn’t have a protein skimmer overflow back then…it was funny for about 2 seconds (wife was 2 seconds behind me!)

Sand is expensive. Early in my reefing days I discovered my father used aragonite sand for his water softener, I looked into it and it seemed everything would be excellent. The price was right, and it looked outstanding. I bought 100 pounds and used it my tank with my newly purchased live rock from a guy who toar is tank down. It had lots of corals on it which promptly got nuked. It took quiet a while in those days for me to discover what the problem was. I had purchased the sand long before adding the livestock so the nuked corals didnt register. I just let things be for a month or so before I decided to try some damsels. I had 5, 20 minutes later they couldnt even swim upright, they had the spins and an hour or so later they were dead.

Lots of investigating further, I discovered my kH was at about 30. This sand is an excellent source of carbonites Sucked the sand out, did some water changes, and everything turned out fantastic.

All this,,,,, to save like $50 on some sand. I lost hundreds of $$ worth of corals in the process.

I have another… I was working on a clients tank, for some reason the PVC was very brittle inside the stand, I had unions splitting from the inside out, very odd happenings. Well they had a chiller issue (I didnt set the system up, but they were smart enough to put the chiller inside the cabinet….) in the process of working this 1hp chiller out of the cabinet I broke the 1/2″ PVC fitting which was connected to the close loop, which was connected to the bottom of the tank, which had NO valve. The water shot out straight at me like a garden hose. I stuck my thumb over the hole and stopped the water flow.

So there I am, in a bar, thumb stuck in a pipe holding 350 gallons worth of water in the tank instead of on the floor. Luckly there were staff around and I talked someone into bringing me some corks from the booze. 3-4 tries later I found a cork that fit pretty good. I wrapped it with some tape to hold the cork and quickly ran to the hardware store. 3 stores later I found a union that matched the union used in the bottom (inside) of the tank. I made a “plug” with the purchased union inside the tank so I could repair the fitting under the tank. I had to move 200-300 hundred pounds of rock to access the fitting.

I spent a day fixing this, all because it was setup poorly.

Some rescue tape would have been safer than a cork!

There was salt encrusting my old Danner heater, I took a pitcher of saltwater and poured it on top of the not water proof heater. Regained consciousness on the other side of the room!!

@overklok. Wow!!! You win! LOL

never use unbeveled edge glass panels in your sump, I did because I thought it was easier to use the sheets I had then get some cut or use acrylic. 4stitches in a deep gash in my thumb later, I’ll never use glass baffles again period lol.

I actually passed out while getting stitched up, I’m a wuss

I took apart a 400 wt. MH ballast that was not working. I was quite a noob around electricity and I accidentally discharged the ballast’s capacitor with my hand! One of the worst shocks I’ve ever had in a long career working around saltwater and electricity.

The year was 1985 and a big ice storm in Newfoundland, no power for three days. I was 15 with a freshwater aquarium on one of those square tube frames. The temp in the tank was dropping so I did what any 15 year old would; I held a cigaratte lighter against the bottom glass of the tank to heat it up…After about 2 or 3 minutes the bottome of the tank cracked and water started to drip out, faster and faster. Luckily it was not catastrophic so I was able to catch alot of it. I later learned about thermal differentials and expansion coefficients. Don’t remember what happened to the fish.

This is freshwater. When I was a teen I had a tank of five 6-7″ piranha. When friends were over I used to stick my head into the tank to freak them out. The fish were well fed, and never bit me. But had they decided to swarm, they probably would have taken a few nice bites before I could react.

A few years back I had a 29g setup with a sump and a poorly designed DIY hang on the back overflow. By poorly designed I mean it would overflow anytime the power would turn off and on again. One friday morning it did this at about 4:00 AM I awoke to the sound of water pouring onto the floor (and my mess of power cords). I run out of my bedroom stepping into water on the floor getting one heck of a shock. I jump out and instead of stepping over to the fuze box and cutting the power to the whole room I quickly set BACK into the water and begin unplugging everything I can (while getting shocked). I called into work sick that day……I didn’t feel good at all.

Umm.. Having the same toothbrush (color and brand) for my teeth and aquarium cleaning! I was cleaning my skimmer cup out with the maintenance toothbrush when my wife asked for help with the kids. Put the skimmer cup back but left the toothbrush on the counter. Later that night you guessed it! I ended up using the damn toothbrush on my teeth. Now I have a different toothbrush and it’s labeled..lol

OMG! Great and horrifying stories so far!

Well I have a lot that I could probably mention in here but one just happened a few months back. See I decided to build my stand to be a peninsula thinking I’d move sooner than later and then it would be a great element to a LARGER place (so far 2+ years later and the move has been put on hold.

So I have the overflow being a HOB on a short side, I decided to have the return line extend over the top of the tank and dump in the tank midway by the bracing. So after a while I really hated the shadow my T5s cast of the PVC pipe so I had it rise up 4″ and then come down that 4″. It worked, no shadow! But when I have to lift the canopy off the tank to change bulbs, etc., I have to clear that extra 4″. Usually I grab my stepson or fiance and have them help but one day I decided I was going to do put it back on myself. It all worked great….for a while. I was just about to get it over the pipe and back on when it shifted, slammed down and I ended up SMASHING a nearly brand new actinic T5 bulb with the majority of it going in the tank. I rooted around and got most of the glass, but for the next few weeks a few bits would be seen here and there. Luckily, no dead coral or fish but I’ve had cyano and dinos since….coincidence?!?!?!

Had my tank up for over a year and everything was doing great. Suddenly all my inverts started to die off. snals 1st, then hard corals, softies…everything, had the water tested, did major water changes, did everything i could think of. Finally everything was gone but a small piece of frogspawn that I’d had for years.
Since most everything had died, decide this would be a good time to clean out my sump. I had hung bags of Phosban and carbon in my sump with aluminum hangers…when I pulled them out I noticed the aluminum had worn away in places and the hanger had a copper thread running thru it. Both hangers were leaching copper into my tank. Had MLF store test for copper and bingo!!
Pulled them out, did a major water change and that took care of the problem. Frogspawn is still with me.

Like a lot of men I don’t like to ask people to do things for me. So in order to extend the time between visits for the person that I had watching my tank the day before I left on vacation I decided I needed to automate my tank as much as possible. So I go to the LFS to find what I need get home promptly trough the instructions away for the float switch auto top off and the auto feeder. Well I get a call about two days into the vacation from the guy watching my tank and apparently the auto feeder had fallen into the tank and was just spinning and spinning on the bottom of the tank and the float switch had never turned on causing the sump to run dry.
This is the best man story I have. It includes the desire to ask as little help as possible from someone, not reading the directions before installing equipment, and changing things right before leaving for two weeks without testing it. The funniest thing is that can remember thinking don’t adjust the skimmer before you walk out.

Well this is going to be a long one…

I got this 5 foot long 2 foot tall glass tank for free, well being as the bottom was tempered and I didn’t have any hole saws handy, AND I hate siphon overflows I decided to cut a little 1″ x 10″ notch right at the top for an overflow… the smart thing to do after this was to have a glass overflow box siliconed directly to the outside, I used acrylic… BUT I didn’t even attach it to the outside, I simply made an acrylic box and a ‘ramp’ that fit inside the slot I just cut, of course I decided to make a flange which I used weld-on to attack to the ramp for the inside to help hold the box in place … not really thinking how would I fill up the gap around the glass slot I cut (as it wasn’t exactly perfectly straight).. so now I have this leaky slot at the top of my tank… well crap I guess I can just remove it and redo it properly. Yeah that flange won’t exactly allow that to happen, ok so how to I break the flange off.. lets get the circular saw over the filled saltwater tank… nah that’s just stupid! Ok wait I can use the down-pipe of the overflow box, and simply pull toward me and that piece of acrylic should just snap right off… well as I did that something snapped alright… unfortunately a rather long lever arm against a long piece of glass wasn’t a pretty sight as this crack instantly popped along the entire length of the 5 foot long pane of glass, with a lovely water fall that came out it.

mine is simple.

I allowed myself to be bitten by the saltwater bug. Thousands of dollars later…..

Funny stories. The toothbrush one reminds me that about a month ago, I cleaned my Pinpoint pH probe tip with an old toothbrush, only to find out later on that my 1 year old had crawled up and started chewing on it (I forgot to put it away). Didn’t tell my wife about that one….

Stories from building a coral greenhouse:

1) First coral tub is full of livestock. Everything’s growing great. I installed a nice new aqualogic heat pump, and ziptied the temp probe to a large pipe in the sump. That ought to hold it, that pipe is fixed and can’t go anywhere. Problem was, I ziptied it at the water level, around the cord 12″ above the probe. A janitor urchin crawls around, snags the probe in its spines, then walks up the pipe to chew more algae. Temp probe is held high and dry for at least 6 hours, which causes the heat pump to switch to heat mode. By the time I found it, the system was 92F and nearly everything died (except the urchin)

2) A few years later, top off in one system was disabled for some now-forgotten reason. “We’ll just top it off with the hose” Then a friend shows up, we run off to do some errands. “Hey Eric, you turned off the hose, right?” “Oh $#|^”. We get back and the salinity is a whopping 1.005. Who knew rose anemones and several xeniids can tolerate nearly fresh water for almost 3 hours? Lucky it was high pH well water or the chlorine would likely have killed everything.

3) When building the greenhouse, I was hauling a bundle of treated 2x8x10′ boards for the foundation in a borrowed pickup truck. They were banded together and weighed about 3000lbs. We put a few straps across the top and figured the extreme weight would do the rest. I gently accelerated at a traffic light at the largest intersection in the city about 20 miles from my destination, and watched in horror as the entire bundle slid right out the bed into the middle of the road (5pm rush hour traffic). Luckily, a cop was driving the other direction and saw it, pulled up behind me and the bundle, which was still banded together, and says (no joke) “Do you think we can lift it and slide it back into the truck?” Also lucky, a group of good ol boys saw it too and stopped to help me load it all back in. 15 minutes later and with a really red face (but no ticket), I was back on my way. Thankfully I had extra tie downs which I opted to employ for the rest of the trip.

Rescue tape would probably not have helped any of these situations but I could use some anyway.

Considerably, the article is in reality the best on this deserving topic. I harmonise with your conclusions and will eagerly look forward to your future updates. Just saying thanks will not just be adequate, for the wonderful lucidity in your writing. I will right away grab your rss feed to stay informed of any updates. Solid work and much success in your business enterprize!