Please share your Aquarium Horror Stories... especially marine aquariums

In My Humble Opinion
1

One thing I’ve learned about life… is to listen to others, and learn from their mistakes and experiences so you don’t repeat it yourself.

I’m starting a marine aquarium for the first time, a high user-error hobby. Unfortunately, a forum I used to lurk at has pulled down its “horror stories” section… which is a shame… I learned a few good tips. Like imparting someone on the seriousness of not overfeeding when you’re on vacation. :smack:

Can y’all share your aquarium-related horror stories or anecdotes or tips that you don’t learn from reading books? Freshwater, saltwater, brackish it doesn’t matter. :slight_smile:

2

Hmmm… where to start? The mighty Aptasia battle or the red tide of algae? Maybe the saltwater ick plague… No, it would have to be the time my BIL wiped out my entire tank with a bean burrito while I was on vacation. He nuked a burrito in the microwave. It blew a fuse, which also happened to control the tank pumps. $3,000 worth of critters suffocated to death and subsequently poisoned the entire tank. I gave up this hobby.
It’s sad because I really had a beautiful setup and I loved my fish. Be prepared for some heartache and an empty wallet. And be patient - with a new tank, there is no such thing as waiting to long for the water to cure. Don’t buy all the new fangled “junk” that the dealers will try to sell you - all you really need is a good sand bed and live rock, a good protein skimmer - do not skimp on the skimmer - and good water flow. Every couple months throw a bag of carbon in the sump. If you want to keep coral, invest in metal halides. On second thought, stay away from coral. It’s a pain in the butt. :wink:

3

Ok, I’ll tell you mine.

I had a beautiful 20-gallon tank, once upon a time. It had live plants. It had beautiful angels, a goby, catfish, tetras…and a betta.

Now I know you’re not supposed to have them living with other fishies, but he’d been the first and I’d slowly introduced the others in, watching constantly to see if he’d freak. I had another tank all set to go just in case, a 5 gallon one.

Well, a year went by with nothing adverse happening. Everybody lived harmoniously. The other fishies avoided the betta, and he ruled the roost.

Well, I don’t know what got into my head to disrupt the status quo, but one day I found a female betta in the pet store. I thought, how perfect, he must be lonely since no one comes near him, I’ll get this. And I introduced the female betta in carefully.

Two days later I found her mangled body in the tank. Well, I knew none of the other fish were doing it, so I guessed the culprit immediately. I figured, OK, that didn’t work, oh well.

Well, the betta must have gone crazy after this. Within one week, he had systematically ripped apart my tank, killed all the angels, and the tetra, and killed all the live plants. Why didn’t I move him? Well, to be honest, I was kind of fascinated. My favorite angel was already dead, so…

Anyway, when I finally relocated him, the goby was dead, too. However, him and the catfish went on living successfully together for another year, before they, too, succumbed to some sort of disease.

And that was the last fishtank I’ve had.

4

I moved back out to Long Island last year and brought my 150-gallon tank with me. The movers got it to the house okay - it looked intact. I set it up and all was fine for a couple days.

Then it developed a pinhole leak in the silicon on one of the edges, and no one noticed until water had seeped through the floor, through the suspended ceiling in the basement and all over my sister’s design project for school.

5

I used to have a little school of Blue Moon Platties. The tank was near a window so I used to have a lot of problems with algae. One of my friends offered me a snail from her own aquarium. Only problem was it was a pond snail. And apparently it laid eggs all over the place without me noticing.

In about a week there were a million miniature snails everywhere. And then I finally noticed the egg slime all over my plastic plants. It took me a few hours to scrape all that slime off the plants with the edge of the straw, and dispose of the invaders. After that, I got a pleco instead. He was much nicer.

Then there was the time that a ghost shrimp stowed away in my bag of new guppies and systematically murdered them one by one. I had no idea why I kept finding dead guppies everywhere until I saw the little psycho in action. Back to the store he went.

6

Male and female bettas will kill each other if they’re not ready to mate… :o( I don’t know why he’d suddenly go berserk after the female, though.

Just GISed a ghost shrimp… how exactly do these things kill? They look like a cleaner shrimp, doesn’t look like they have any pinchers.

The only real horror story I have from my limited experience with freshwater aquariums is very similar to the snail story… my snails bred like crazy, had to remove some. Now, I have a bunch of bettas… I’ve got a bookcase display full of bettas. Well, my space is limited, so I have a couple of storage boxes on the bottom, and there’s a betta jar on top.

Well, as it happened, one of those boxes contained my cat toys. Kitty spied a string dangling out of the lid, and he couldn’t resist, I guess, so he tore the place, and knocked over 2 betta jars.

Miraclously… both the jars flipped on the TOP… they were sealed with a tiny hole on top for feeding and air… so there was relatively very little water leaking out into the carpet. When I came home both jars were still half-filled, bettas still swimming happily. Both bettas are now still happily living.

7

Velveeta–OUCH. What a story. How could a microwave blow a fuse? Was there any error involved or just very bad luck?

I’m going by Robert Fenner’s Conscientious Marine Aquarist book which basically recommends the same as you… live rock, very good skimmer, very good lights. Not buying any equipment though until I actually make the move to my cabin in February. Starting with 55g and maybe 80# of LR, not putting anything more than a gramma or perhaps a tiny cleanup invertebrate in it until I can actually keep parameters steady. From what I understand, nearly all aquarists that “give up” or “burn out” do so because they start with something that’s too challenging. I’m wondering if I’m overstepping by starting with a FOWLR instead of FO, myself.

8

er- silicone

9

He was supposed to only come over to feed THE FISH - not himself. However, he was still living at home with his parents and my guess is that he went a bit wild and had all the electronics humming at the same time. When the fuse went, half of the house was still okay and he never checked to see if the tank was still running. I wanted to beat him to death, but my husband wouldn’t let me.

FOWLR should be fine. Add 4-6 of live sand. The rock is pretty easy if you have good lighting - you want that pretty pink and purple coralline to grow. Make sure it’s already cured, and check it for critters and stowaways before you bring it home - Aptasia anyone? Also, the bigger the tank, the easier it is to keep everything balanced. More water = less evaporation. 55 is okay, but if you can afford a bigger one, I would go for it. 55’s are also pretty narrow which makes it hard to stack rock and still get good water circulation around the whole thing. Another tip - we used water from one of those places that uses reverse osmosis. That way, all the nasty stuff is already removed. Sometimes, the aquarium stores will come fill a tank for you. I don’t know how much they charge though.

10

I actually mean that the more water volume you have the less likely the amount of evaporation you get per day will upset the salt/chemical balance.

11

About 15 years ago, I had a very nice tank, mostly tropicals with a couple of very small African cichlids conditioned to neutral pH. They lived in relative harmony. Each cichlid had a cave it “owned” (they came late, so they didn’t rule the tank, and the black ghost knife would not have let them), and left everyone else alone. Due to space issues, I didn’t have a medical or emergency tank.

Then the fish store got in some beautiful blue crayfish. I had to have one. Got it home and properly acclimated it to my tank water. Introduced it to the tank, while simultaneously offering the others some live bloodworms to draw their attention.

Well, the two cichlids came out of their cave wearing bibs and carrying drawn butter. I had no way of protecting the poor, yet expensive, crayfish until the next day (when I would have returned it), and it didn’t last that long. It fought as much as it could, but after I came home from work, there was nothing but a shell and a couple of dirty bibs.

I’ve also found that red-tailed black sharks and black ghost knifefish don’t co-exist well; and that one can never sufficiently cover a tank to prevent a rope fish from leaving it.

12

Yep, on that note…
I had a Flame Angel that thought it had died and gone to heaven when I added a live sponge to my tank. Angels and corals don’t mix well. Tangs are good algae controllers, however, if you add the kind that you pay good money for, they will happily chow down on it too. That was an expensive snack. :smack:

13

I watched my little serial killer ghostie do the evil deed. I was feeding the fish and he was just sitting on the bottom, not moving. A food flake drifted down near him and a guppy darted after it. Then suddenly the shrimp snapped out, quicker than a blink, wrapped his legs around the guppy and dragged him down. Then he sat there and…ate pieces out of the guppy’s head till it stopped flailing around. It was creepy.

14

I never thought I’d want fish until I read this thread, specifically the description of the Guppie lunch for the Ghostie. Sounds like a great way to teach the kids the whole circle of life thing (once the youngest is about two).

Only story I have is a freshwater tank my grandparents had - either they had a cat that didn’t care or didn’t have a cat. Once they acquired a cat, they put saranwrap over part of the top of the tank and had plexiglass over the rest of it, decorated with pictures and small knicknacks (there was a bit of a hole, and of course the air unit thingy, too. They made sure the cat stayed away.

Until one day the cat jumped up atop the tank. Normally very well behaved, sat and waited until the food was set in front of her before eating, never jumping on counter tops (furniture was fine, but no shelves or counters or televisions), ever. She was chasing some unmannerd mote that had riled her in some way, lept carefully over the plexiglass and nicknacks, landing with her rear feet on the plexiglass and her forefeet on the saranwrap - she had such a look on her face as she slowly slid lower and lower, head first, into the tank …

15

Then there was the time my in-laws found an aquarium built into a large lamp. It was huge - maybe over 3 feet high. I have no idea how many gallons but probably in the 20 gallon range. Big. Very Big. (Well, for a table lamp…)

So they stocked it and maintained it and watched the fish swim and live.

Then they took a long weekend trip.

Yes, someone had forgotten to turn off the lamp.

<penis ensued>

They came home and the whole lamp had melted down. Seems it was a plastic tank and someone had ignored the recommended wattage for the bulbs, preferring more light in that corner. Dead fish were trapped in pockets of melted plastic since it had melted from the top down forming ripples and bulges of water and plastic.

Another very graphic example of why my in-laws should not be trusted with live things.

16

Say what?

17

Capacity for heartache, yes; that and the empty wallet sums it up. I had an 80-gallon freshwater tank with not very much heartache until … until … one morning I woke up to discover the heater’s thermostat had malfunctioned, and the heater had been on all night. The water temperature was over 90, and all the fish but the guppies were floating upside-down. It just about tore me apart. When the guppies died later (of natural causes) I took the tank down and never looked back.

18

Oh…sorry. Here is the thread of origin.

19

Well instead of a horror story, I’ll give you practical advice.

You probably know that every month you should change about 20-25% of the water.

What most people don’t know, but is a really good trick is that every 3 months, you should change about 25% of the gravel. Just scoop out the old and replace it with new.

Also, remember the prices of these fish are astronomical.

I had a die off recently in my 72 bow front (coolest tank I ever saw) and only have 2 damsels left. I plan on stripping it and restarting it fresh water (I miss my tiger barbs)

20

I come from a fairly animal-savvy family, so when we inherited a 50 gallon freshwater tank, complete with a crotchety and very large Oscar, we figured we knew (or could quickly figure out) what we were doing. Bzzzt! To this day I can’t look at the fish in the store without thinking of Christians and lions.

We put a pleco in the tank to take care of the algae. No problems there; the Oscar had a go at him and the pleco beat him off with his spiny fins. After that they lived in relative harmony until the day the pleco died.

Next, we figured kissing gourami were a good bet. Cute, aggressive, and they could buddy up and develop a healthy relationship with the Oscar (“You live on this side of the tank and we’ll live on that side, and if you come over here we’ll bite your fins off.”) But the Oscar had his revenge. I remember coming into the living room on a Saturday morning to find my parents making a human wall in front of the tank, and my dad bobbing for something white and flaky with the fish net. Cut to my mother realizing the kids were up, and as she tried to shoo us away, my dad pinned the gutted, skinned, and eyeless gourami corpse to the tank wall. Insert short interlude of screaming. Eventually the Oscar got the other one, too, and we were back to Oscar and pleco once again.

A few months later (this was back in the days when elementary schools were allowed to condemn small animals to death-by-third-grader), I won a goldfish as a prize in a school fair. I took it home and promptly dumped it in the tank. Bloop! and the Oscar swam away, chewing. I doubt the poor guy even managed to hit the water. Two years later my brother did the exact same thing, except he got to watch his goldfish replay a Wild Kingdom-style “and now the cheetah chases down the helpless antelope fawn.”

Then our dwarf siren went MIA. At first we assumed our Oscar ate him, but after bits of his decomposing corpse kept surfacing no matter how much we cleaned the tank, we finally thought to disassemble the filter. Too bad he didn’t know the trick with the rock.

When I moved out on my own, I was tempted to get a tank and do it right. But hearing about all the other things that can go wrong – especially the ones that don’t involve the fish killing each other – makes me conclude that even if I managed to set up a perfectly well-ordered tank with happy fish and healthy plants, any kind of catastropic tank failure would leave me feeling like Mission Control after the Columbia disaster.