The Things We Got Wrong Thread

[chromus]

Hi All.

The intention is not for people to provide feedback on what people post but to instead provide a resource for new reefers on what tank owners consider they got wrong with their systems and what they would have done differently if they had the chance.

If you don't have a link to the tank you are giving details to in your sig please provide it in the thread.

In my 8ft system I got a few things wrong, but the big hitters are:

1) Sump partitions not in the correct place, my skimmer section is too small and my return section is too big. Not drastic and fixable when I get the time.

2) I have 2 tanks under my display, 1 is the traditional sump, the other holds my topup water and supps. I aligned the supps containers along the length of the supps sump, making it nearly impossible to see the amounts remaining in each section. I need 2 new glass pieces cutting to swap out the longitudinal diviers and make then transverse, again a task that can be easily fixed with time.

3) My tank is inwall and is 1100mm above the floor and it looks great as a room feature, but it is hard to see the colourations of some corals as you are looking at them side on and getting to see the semi shaded areas in some cases so I need to lower the level of some of the corals to see them at their best. Time and a lot of energy to fix this as it will involve a complete re-scape

[Matt1961]

I'm relatively new to reefing but have still made a few mistakes by not listening to advice given here and elsewhere by more experienced reefers

1. Rushed to quick to stock my tank - despite being told 100 times (ok slight exaggeration ) I stocked my tank with too many fish too quickly, experienced nitrate and phosphate issues and then tried to use "magic" remedies to resolve

2. Put SPS corals in too early before tank had stabilised - well not really, I was given some birdsnest frags which quickly died, then had some frags given to me at a frag meet, which quickly died, and now they are growing beautiful purple coralline algae I do now have some dallas which is growing well and about to try some more SPS soon

3. Realised pretty early on that although my tank looked good at 2 feet tall, it was a pain to work on as I couldn't reach the bottom (and for those that know me I'm not exactly short). I soon upgraded to a bigger tank which is a bit shallower but the stand is higher so I still cant reach the bottom

4. Didn't realise how much I could gain out of joining my local MASX community- I put off joining originally I was a bit "scared" of joining a group of experienced reefers with my crappy setup, with cheap equipment and limited stocking. However after joining and meeting most of the members over the past 12 months I have learnt a lot, helped a little and made a heap of new friends who I never would have otherwise. I know have a close knit community of local reefers willing to lend a hand when needed. As an example earlier this week we had a member who was having issues with tank WQ testing ( hope you don't mind me dobbing you in ) and some weird results. They had tested with multiple test kits and getting wildly different results. They cam around late that night to my place and we did a comprehensive set of tests using both their and my kits. The result was we both learnt a lot about our test kits, which ones were reading relatively close and which ones were giving radically different results. Between us we made the call on which ones to trust and what we needed to do to the tank to prevent a crash. Much better having a couple of people to help than stressing on your own.

5. Thought I could get away without an ATO - and well yes you can, and I did and all was well until I needed surgery on my back which has prevented me from lifting anything over 2kg and being able to bend over. Putting 7-10l of RO water in every day now has become a major pain in the.......... back. needless to say I have a temporary ATO set up currently working and while not perfect it has enabled me to stop stressing about getting someone to top it up every day (FYI I am using a chemical dosing pump and just pumping a set amount of water every 4 hrs into the sump, every week now I just have to get someone to top up my RO container for me

Any way this is the start of a 1000 things I have done wrong (well maybe not wrong but could have been better) and all of them could have been avoided if I had of listened to the more experienced guys that tried to warn me

Matt

[swazzle]

Biggest 2 mistakes rushed the tank and putting new fish in (and not knowing the much about the exact species requiremetns), poor first cycle and trying to run without a sump initially haha


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[jayellul]

There are many ways to skin a cat. Choose a skinning method and stick with it!

[Brett240]

On my first setup I had a stand built out of wood that must wasn't up to the job. Terrible access (closed off on 3 sides) and started to buckle with age. My current build is stainless steel with removable panels. The easier it is to access your sump the more likely you will do the maintenance you are supposed to do

[smidy69]

Hmmmm biggest regret should have got a tank twice as big!!!

Worst thing I went through was my cycle as everyone does but could have prevented the extreme amount of hair algae a fair bit as drilled some live rock and put some acrylic rods in it to make a long that I could not find as one in shops. Whilst drilling and puttying together and putting back into tank I dont know if it was left out to long that create alot of die off hence major hair algae or maybe a release of anerobic bacteria from drill into the depth of the rock and when back in water possibly released a large amount of dead bacteria. The combination of both could have been on the cards also to creating 4" of hair algae several times after scrubbing and water changing. Was a huge battle to get on top of and took months to beat the hair algae even with some clean up crew.

Another thing I would like to do better next time is have a single large volume return pump that can eliminate the multiple pumps I have and then just run taps off to all the equipment I need to flow water to. This can and probly will be acheived in the future but would have been nice to know from the start.

[terbit]

Biggest mistake was putting Saltwater in a glass box

[fsamir]

I have made some many mistakes. These are the ones I can remember:

1. Heater in an area in the sump that can run dry.
2. Tried to reuse an old tank with mineral deposit on the glass.
3. Deep sand bed.
4. Large investment in live stock without any investment in redundancy and alerting.
5. Buying fish without researching it first.
6. Traveling away without a tank buddy.
7. Jumping fishes in a tank without a hood.
8. DIY with the expectation it will be cheaper.
9. SPS tank without frequent Alk testing and solid temperature control.

[jayellul]

Biggest mistake was putting Saltwater in a glass box

[mrkris]

impulse buying. do thorough research with everything and make an educated decision instead of buying something because its shiney (or on special!).