Fishkeeping confessions?

Decoy

Decoy

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Lets hear those confessions!

I'll start..

This is how my fish keeping adventure started off 2+ years ago..

I put fish in uncycled water!
I kept Guppies in a vase, no filter, no heater, no water changes!
I kept Beta's in a fish bowl, no filter, no heater and cold water changes!
I blew a sick fish up with a denture tablet while trying to euthanize it!
I tried to breed Beta's, they were both males!
I brought a fish back to life after killing it through water temp changes!

These things seriously happened and there is probably more but its any wonder I still keep fish after these horror stories. Thank god for sites like Fishlore!
 

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I went to flush a cory that was dead but he was alive
WHY WOULDN'T YOU MOVE CORY!!!!
 

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I accidently sucked up a plecko with a gravel vacuum and thought I had killed it since it was laying on its back and not moving at all. My husband flushed it. After more looking I found fishlore and it turns out the plecko was probably in shock and would have been fine in a few days. I went and got a second plecko it went belly up in a few weeks and I'm not sure why. I got some algae pallets for him and the otto I already had
 
1) I sucked up a bandit cichlid with the gravel vac. He didn't survive the experience
2) In the beginning I cycled my 36 bowfront with cherry barbs and lemon tetras. After my cycle took the first fish I put in was a guppy. The tetras destroyed him within 15 minutes
3) I put a festivum with 3 guppies. The festivum destroyed them
4) I had a single laetacara dorsigera that was transferred from my 36 bowfront to my 75. In the 36 she was very docile and got along well with everyone. Once she was transferred to the 75 she went on a platy killing spree and took out all of my platies in a few weeks
5) I have flooded my house on multiple occasions due to user error such as a)having my canister filters overloaded with media b) turning the canister back on without making sure the outflow is in the tank c)the sink clogging up while doing a water change
6) I used to have a very nice looking planted tank. Then I got severums.
 
Guys I'm surprised weve kept to the hobby after thsI nightmare. I cried myself to sleep after finding out we may have flushed a perfrctly good plecko.
 
Even after decades of fish keeping things happen. I was doing a refit on a 55. I took a step (barefoot as always when working around aquariums) and froze. I felt something soft and wet. I lifted my foot and there on the floor was a twist of wet dog fur. My heart jumped, I picked it up, pulled at the fur and there was one of our black kuili. I took it right over to the aquarI'm and put my hand holding the little one in. I gently swished my hand pulling the fur off. After a few moments the little one came to and swam from my hand. That was a week ago Sunday and it seems fine.

I have learned to be barefoot and to tread very lightly when I am removing things from an aquarium.
 

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1. Severely overstocked 10 gallon with several high bioload fish
2. Lots of temp incompatibilities in other tank
3. Flushed platy because he was sick and I thought it’d be an instant death
4. Had a variatus get his head stuck above water in between the glass and breeder box
5. Added a hungry jewel cichlid to my tank(he was such a little jerk)
6. Steped on a jewel cichlid that jumped out of QT(barely touched him as I felt something and took any weight off immediately)
7. Kept a betta in a bowl(to be fair it wa sheared, filtered, and a relatively large bowl)
8. Took pet store advice
9. Added fake gravel, decor, and plantsyuck
10. Was stupid in everything, particularly the beginning of the hobby.
 
I was cleaning my cannister filter once and totally forgot to take the intakes out before I opened it, ended up with 10 gallons on the floor...15 minutes before my guests arrived!
 
I started out with 3 guppies in a 2.5 uncycled tank but two of them are now thriving in a 10 gallon today!

Oh yeah, and I had a mystery disease in a 5 gallon tank which wiped out >20 guppy fry in the span of month which I had to flush down the toilet..

I also killed 4 rcs because I had too high nitrates (I still do but I'm trying my best because it's high in my tap water)
 
I think I might have done that Ohio, but can’t rememver... I did take out a decoration and leave it overnight, put it in bleach the next day and found a pleco floating. Thinking back on it, I had dreams/nightmares about that incident(I felt really bad about it).
 

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I almost did once!! A fry was in the net for half an hour before I noticed but they survived somehow... only to later die to the mystery disease
 
1. my bucket over flowed when I was on my phone, It was carpet...
2.My betta tank siphoned water out overnight through airline tubing with 3/4 left in the tank. The rest leaking into the basement...
3. I siphoned my minnow before ( he was fine)
4.Had 4 male gouramis in a 20 gallon (Everything was fine)
5. When you forget if you dosed the water or not....
6.My mom killed a guppy even though he was fine and getting better from dropsy...

7. my betta ate my 2cherry shrimp and my ghost shrimp who survived 2months with him.
8.my 5 gallon tank planted with sand killed 5 ghost shrimp with in months
9. All my bettas lost to finrot (Why can't I fix finrot...)
 
1) I put my betta in uncycled water (actually very recent)
2) Did not keep my juvenile brown trout with a chiller (after I realized my mistake, he did fine, I added ice cubes now and then)
3) Kept hard-water species in acidic water.
4) Overstocked in a freshwater "refugium" (got bad when all of the mayflies molted and flew everywhere)
 
I have considered buying a security camera and point it at my tank at home so I can watch it online from work.
 

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You know you are addicted to the hobby when you see unrelated things and think about fish.
Like me thinking about Sunset Platys when I saw this:

NXJeJju.jpg
 
My autocorrect on my phone is just filled with fish stuff!!!

Look, here is me pressing my middle button a bunch of times:

Thanks for the advice from my birb try to dip her head in the tank size is stunting it's growth and a few years ago but it was a bit of an d on't eh substrate without floating off to bed now it seems I have run into some ph and a few years ago but it was super cold and a few years ago but it was super cold...

See?!
 
1) sucked an ADF up a siphon (he might’ve been okay, he died unexpectedly a week or so and it is unknown if that was a contributing factor)

2) bettas in bowls+ bettas in uncycled tanks

3)I thought one of my fish was hiding then I found him dead in the tank, I have no idea how long he was dead for, but upwards of two days.

4)betta without a heater (for like, 2 days he was fine)

5)I put an empty snail shell in with my betta thinking it was still there for a good 2 months. I don’t know if there was ever a snail in that shell or if it just came without a snail in there

6)No quarantine (ive learned)

7)ive burnt quite a bit (aka most) of the skin on my hand off by accident with the ammonia testing fluid. Oof that hurts.
 
Added 6 red cherry shrimp, could only find 4...until the next time I used that net.

Responded to posts on fishlore without reading the entire post I was referring to.

Thought more filteration would lower nitrates.

After a water change and turning the filter back on, I wondered why I didn’t fill the tank all the way up. 10 minutes later I wondered why I only filled it 1/2 way. Finally looked and hob was clogged and water was running down the back of the tank.

Probably more, just can’t remember.
 

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Added 6 red cherry shrimp, could only find 4...until the next time I used that net.

Responded to posts on fishlore without reading the entire post I was referring to.

Thought more filteration would lower nitrates.

After a water change and turning the filter back on, I wondered why I didn’t fill the tank all the way up. 10 minutes later I wondered why I only filled it 1/2 way. Finally looked and hob was clogged and water was running down the back of the tank.

Probably more, just can’t remember.
Click to expand...
Just remembered another. Turned off hob filter to do water change. Forgot to turn back on....for 4 days. Sponge filters saved my life, or the life of my fish.
 
I managed to not notice my betta was dead in his tank long enough that when I went to net him out he literally just dissolved. It was horrible :/
 
I managed to not notice my betta was dead in his tank long enough that when I went to net him out he literally just dissolved. It was horrible :/
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Oh my goodness!!! Straight from a horror movie
 
Oh my goodness!!! Straight from a horror movie
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Omg, it was horrible lol. An entire family of FIVE didn’t notice this fish was dead! The kids and I even fed the dead fish . We now pay much closer attention to ALL of our living things!
 
Here are my confession

1. Killed 3 bettas in one year

2. Placed all of them in the same conditions the last died from still wondering what I was doing wrong.

3. They all lived in a 2.5 gallon cylinder with a heater, water changes whenever I felt like it(100% wc complete wipe down I might add) , and no filter.

4. Went through a grand total of 8 bettas before I decided to use the internet.

9. Let a bucket overflow bc I walked away from a siphon to go to the bathroom, I have wood floors and live on the third floor of a n apartment complex.

10. Fed my first betta 6 pellets 4x a day

11. Added root tabs every two weeks because I thought they worked like alka seltzer and was convinced they were dissolved by then. I also did full blown flourish at full dose, tank wasn’t even cycled.

12. Thought API products were the answer to everything

13. Spent over $200 on an “orange koi” betta, turns out the marble gene is a thing and now he is burgundy with black spots and some other speckles. He’s still gorgeous just not what I was thinking of when I bought him.

14. Went to the local pet store every other day to ask about my one betta thinking they were some all knowing fish experts who just wait for idiots like me to ask dumb questions.

Basically we all make mistakes and learn things from them but I’ve come a long way from that dirty 2 gallon with and extra extra large floating log lol
 
I was taking greasy layer off the water surface with a paper towel before water change. Half an hour later I discovered I was missing a fish. I literally took it out from garbage from the soaked paper towel. The fish is doing fine Now I check for fish every single time ompous:
 
Only one failure so far. I set up a DIY snail trap using an empty plastic bottle with a balloon cut off and inverted to form a "tube" into the bottle to stop the pest snails getting out of the trap once they got in.

Only thing I caught was one of my male cherry barbs who got caught in the balloon and died. Found him floating inside the bottle the next day. Sorry I failed you little mate!
 
1. I started off with 2 black moor in a gallon bowl.
2. Added 2 oranda to bowl.
3. Bought a 5 gallon hexagon kit with undergravel filter, added all 4 fish.
4. A week later bought 2 more common goldfish added those too.
5. A week after that added 2 Cory's.
6. Bought a 60 gallonadded all fish to that with a tiny 10 gallon box filter.
7. Finally got it right and got an eheim canister. All survived.
8. Got bored with goldfish, rehomed all started a community tank.

Years later...
9. Sucked up a botia sidhimunkI with siphon, looked for it for an entire week before I realized what happened.

We all gotta start somewhere I guess. I try to educate my kids on fish but I just get 'I hate fish ' why did you get another tank mom' lol. Oh well. The more you say it kids...
 
1. Put a juvenile oscar in with a half grown Oscar. I found him headless on Christmas eve.
2. Put my first betta in a community 10 gallon with non temp compatible fish. It was uncycled. Betta got columnaris within days. Whether he came with it or not the no cycle didnt help
3. Put 4 guppies in a holding tank while I upgraded their tank. 3 jumped out but I was able to save one and he's still kicking. Idk how long they lay on that floor.
 

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Many sins back in the early 70's, when I was starting out.

My most typical newbie experience was when I bought a common plecostomus & I only had a 10 gallon tank.

He might have lasted for 3 months.

I recently killed a beautiful little betta because I was careless manipulating the filter & I squashed her.

I siphoned a Tetra out through the hand pump into the bucket. It survives.

I tried to take fish out of my tank while I still had large rocks in there for them to bash into. It got Bloody.

I've had tanks crack and leak before, but as for self-made water damage I recently flooded my office floor during a botched dual pump sump experiment.

I misunderstood the cause of the overflow (one pump had stopped and it was back siphoning) and yanked out the main siphon, which sent another shot of water down. Meanwhile the feed hose on the dead pump was still siphoning water onto the floor the whole time, but this was not immediately obvious because it was all running out of the overflowing sump.

Worst flood ever!

Also I bought fish and put them in quarantine, and by the time they were perfect to put in the show tank, I realized the fish in that tank were sick.

Now everybody gets a double quarantine, just at the time when I want to consolidate tanks and move them around the house.

My worst mistakes ever however:

I killed a 10 year old Pleco when I walked away from the tank with the lid off, and did not notice that he had jumped out behind the tank.

I killed my school of 30 neon tetras by adding penguin tetras to the same tank without separate quarantine. I thought I would be smart because the Neons and Penguins all came from the same tank.
 
Once my dad and I moved an old 55 gallon that we had removed the fish from and set it outside with very little water. We were then wondering where out pleco was, as he was missing over the course of about a month. We found him a little hungry but he had been surviving the spring with the algae that grew and the few inches of rain we had been getting.
 
I accidentally squashed an ember tetra while moving it. He lost his eye and died from his injuried a couple of hours later.(1 week ago)

I was using a net and I saw a floating fish in my 75. It was a cory getting air and I freaked out. I forgot what I was doing with the net and now there is a baby endler guppy in my 75(1 week ago)

Drank tank water when I tried to start a siphon(It was water with lots of poop from the bottom of the tank)

Forgot to do WCs on my tanks for a month

Bought a clown loach without knowing their full size

Dropping a silver molly into my koi pond on accident(Died of hypothermia and being swallowed and thrown back up by koi)
 
Oh wow...
I read that warmer water helped with ich so I poured warm water into the tank with panda goldfish. He went belly up in no time.

Bought 3 comet goldfish and 2.5 gallon tank. Two died and the survivor is now 8" long and living in a pond I had to build him on my patio.

Built the pond on my patio too close to back door and now have midge flies breeding in the pond and in my tanks, leaving their blood worm larvae as a thank you gift.

Started a tropical tank and learned that I don't like tropical fish as much as my goldfish.

Set 2 filter cartridges down on the sofa and my dogs tore them up all over my wool rug that can't be washed.

Found my cat eating something and when I took it away I saw it was one of my goldfish all chewed up...realized I hadn't closed the lid on the tank. (I was a kid on this one).

Was told goldfish won't breed in an inside tank and now have approximately 50 goldfish fry that I am raising.

Learned to leave the eggs in the tank when goldfish lay them so they will eat them.
 
I accidentally squashed an ember tetra while moving it. He lost his eye and died from his injuried a couple of hours later.(1 week ago)

I was using a net and I saw a floating fish in my 75. It was a cory getting air and I freaked out. I forgot what I was doing with the net and now there is a baby endler guppy in my 75(1 week ago)

Drank tank water when I tried to start a siphon(It was water with lots of poop from the bottom of the tank)

Forgot to do WCs on my tanks for a month

Bought a clown loach without knowing their full size

Dropping a silver molly into my koi pond on accident(Died of hypothermia and being swallowed and thrown back up by koi)
Click to expand...
I just drank the tank water last week when I tried syphoning a small hose by sucking on it. Two days later I found the first bloodworm in the tank. My stomach is still hurting when I think about it.
 
All I have to say.. 4 common goldfish.. 5 gallon tank..... I thought I was the best person every for getting them out of the bowls they were in
 
Okay here's a tip.
When you do your water tests do not use a normal drinking glass or coffee cup to take your water samples.

Let's just say, I know what tank water tastes like too.
 
This was more serious than funny I suppose....I had an older goldfish named "Rhoda" when I was moving across the country. So I put her in a five gallon bucket with some of her tank water and a snug fitting lid and drove on. She did quite well and everything was going great then things went down hill in a few weeks. With gold fish my usual "go to" is several frequent partial water changes. But with each partial water change she would get worse. I also kept testing the water and the clue was....after a water change the water tested worse than before! So I had our well water tested by the health department. It was off the charts for e colI and a bunch of other things! Yuck. Well that fish didn't survive...but she probably saved me from illness. We stopped drinking all water from that well that day.
And probably because of my experience at that time. I ended up getting a job in a pet store cleaning their fresh water tanks. I cleaned tanks five days a week and sold fish on Saturdays. I would start at one side of the fish room and at the end of two weeks I was at the end and would start all over again!
 
I accidentally put a terra in with my fantail goldie... she tried to eat it and got it jammed in her mouth. I found her floating upside down. I had to hold her and pull the half eaten terra out. I thought she was dead... went to get a net and she had freaked while I was gone and flew out the tank. She was fine after all this and lived for another 3 years!
 
Like 7 years old, had a betta in a bowl, went to shake the food in, cap wasn’t secure, all the food went in the bowl.
 

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I had no idea that my wife would agree to an outdoor fish pond, and I really wasn't in love with the idea, myself, at all.

But somewhere along the way I mentioned the idea and now it looks like I am going to build one.
 
oh, this is a fun thread.

i've had fish ever since I was 5 or 6 years old. I went through several bettas in fish bowls, and also had black skirted tetras with serpae tetras (actually I think they were tiger barbs??), two or three at a time, and replaced them whenever they died in a 2 gallon tank or something with just an airstone. at one point I had a dwarf gourami with one of those guys and some red fish I don't quite remember the look of -- maybe a red and black platy? I think. none of their tanks/bowls were ever cycled or had filters. no heaters. they actually lived a pretty decent amount of time iirc. my mom at least made sure they were conditioned and the ph levels were right, bless her heart.

we had a betta in a vase with a water lily on top that lived for like 8 years. we used distilled water. there was nothing else in the vase except for some glass rocks at the base.

my last betta I had in college (died about 5 years ago) was kept in a half gallon container and eventually got a bad case of fin rot. I was going to flush him to end his suffering because he was very listless, but as soon he got in the toilet he started thrashing/swimming around and I couldn't do it! I fished him out and put him back in his container lol

I kept my african dwarf frog by himself in a little half gallon container too for a couple of years. he only got upgraded to a 5.5g filtered tank (not cycled) and got a mate the last 5 months of his life. he lived to be 5+ years old.

i'm sure i'm going to keep making mistakes but hopefully not as many now that i'm researching this stuff extensively....
 
Flushing him doesn’t end his misery, it just forces him to share water with a bunch of human waste! Only flush them if they’re dead.
 
yeah, that's just how we did it when I was growing up (with the dead ones, at least -- and whenever I didn't insist upon burying them in the yard or garden). I didn't know any other way to euthanize him. eventually he died, poor thing.
 
About 20 years ago, when I was working in that pet store I kept two sea horses in a 5 gallon (yes, FIVE GALLON) tank on my kitchen counter with a little foam triangle filter and a couple little pieces of live rock for their only filtration. Did partial water changes every week and fed them live brine shrimp. They actually lived several months then I moved them into a 30 gallon and they continued to do well. But I think they had a hard time finding food in the larger tank and I either sold them or gave them away. Beginners luck I guess! Actually I think you can get away with any crazy thing sometimes if you keep up your frequent partial water changes and feed you fish the amount and type of food they need.
 
5 comet goldfish, 5 tiger barbs, a common pleco, and two black skirt tetras in a 10 gallon tank, they didn't die of nitrates and I never did a single water change. How did they all die? I decided to do my first water change and I killed them all from shock in the span of an hour or two
 
I had no idea that my wife would agree to an outdoor fish pond, and I really wasn't in love with the idea, myself, at all.

But somewhere along the way I mentioned the idea and now it looks like I am going to build one.
Click to expand...

Whatever size you decide on, double it. Trust me.
 
Baby flounder in a critter keeper. That was a very long time ago.

I also kept a Red Bellied Piranha with a fancy goldfish (I believe it was a Fantail). They lived together for quite a long time, actually. In fact, I recall the goldfish being a bit of a bully. Other then that, they were “besties”. Then one decided the other was food. This happened long ago, as well.
 
My friend kept a huge angelfish and a piranha together in a 60 gallon.

The piranha was almost 5 in, but that angelfish kept him at Bay.
 

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