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Welcome to the Mistakes Page

Last update: July 2005

      I have made so many mistakes I hardly know where to begin.   Shall I start with how I knocked the spigot off my hot water heater flooding my basement with hot water, not to mention burning myself?  Or maybe the dropping of an aquarium in the bathtub while trying to rinse it out, causing several hundred dollars worth of damage as the porcelain shattered?  How about the time I noticed I had been giving one of my favorite corals Electro-shock therapy?
     I make wonderfully expensive mistakes.  Until I either become wealthy or figure out why these stupid things happen to me all the time I am stuck being a tightwad and watching my cash flow.

I like to equate taking care of a reef tank to driving a car in the snow.
Go to fast = Crash.
Over react to changes in the road= Crash.
Can't slow down in time=Crash.
Fail to keep moving= Get stuck.
Don't follow the ruts in the snow= get ready for a bumpy ride.
Hit the brakes to hard= Lucky if you don't crash.
No Insurance= Pay the damages.


     Some of the more preventable errors I have made are listed below.  I have not attempted to order them at all, simply tossing them in as I can recall. Seems to come out as a sort of Do and Don't list.

1) The first that comes to mind is being a tightwad in the wrong areas. Lesson learned is buy quality stuff where you should. My top 3 would be Lights, Skimmers, and Pumps.

2) Failing to insure proper airflow in the skimmer on a regular basis. Lesson learned, is you can get a tank well out of balance that way. This is especially true if your feeding as if your skimmer is doing it's job well.

3) Make no drastic changes in a tank if at all avoidable. The one exception is the hurricane cleaning on occasion. Try to limit any changes to your system to the time after you have at least two (more is better) reasons for doing so.

4) Be extra careful with those magnet loaded glass cleaners. I have a scratch one my main tank that really burns me up every time I look at it. I think they should be called magnetic glass scratchers.

5) If you have a GFIC that keeps tripping, do not continually reset it and ignore the issue. Something is causing it and it seems rare that it is due to overloading the circuit. Find the culprit devise or other cause and correct the trouble.

6) Do not place any live stock that looks even remotely lethargic into your main tank. I did this once and it took about 7 months to recover from it. Then I did it again and it took well over a year to semi recover.

7) Don't use single part additives to maintain calcium and alkalinity unless you really know what your doing. I really hosed things on a couple of tanks doing this. In hindsight, blind tightrope walking without the balance pole would be easier.

8) Save all your receipts! You may be amazed how much you can get back on returns if you have them. Oh and don't pay retail prices for regular supplies unless you have money to burn and/or have an immediate use. Go with Mail/Internet ordering instead.

9) Try not to ignore your freshwater tanks if you have them but are starting reef. They will still depend on you for their success.

10) Anywhere near the top of the tank is Not the place to store your tanks food!! Ever!

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