Mistakes you’ve made that you will never make again

Just for fun...
What’s everyone’s worst aquarium/fish keeping mistake?

 

OH I KNOW thinking that all a fish needs is water and feeding them 3-4 times a day (my previous logic being “well we eat 3 times a day so they must need breakfast lunch and dinner too”)

 

Oh, then there was the MASSIVE mistake of thinking that male endlers would stay in their tank when I put girls in the connected tank next door!
That was a year ago, and I’ve just given away over a hundred females that came from that little mistake, and still have loads of boys cluttering up my 123L tank, with babies still coming!!!

 

Thinking that aggressive and peaceful fish would be all happy together as long as they get fed and have enough space

 

I learned over the years that the more time spent planning and preparing for new set-ups, the better. And don't "pressure" yourself with tinelines, thats how big mistakes happen and how hobbies stop becoming fun!

 

Forgot to put the cap on a filter tube after cleaning. Lost my prize Neon Blue Hap when he got stuck. Why is it always the one most prized that goes?

 

Thinking that a growing colony of branching algae was the "roots" of my flame moss.

 

Dropping a whole cube of freeze dried brine shrimp in a tank. I thought that thing would never stop expanding and throwing off little bits and pieces.

After that one time I'd break them up into smaller pieces.

 

So many to choose from...so many mistakes as I've really embraced this hobby over the last year and change. But the root of almost all my problems comes from this: lack of patience.

Whether it was killing fish with an aggressive water change, impulse buying, failing to quarantine new fish, or having algae explosions...it all boils down to my fatal flaw: lack of patience.

Over a year and half (and 5 going on 6 tanks), my impatience is still my biggest enemy.

 

Ok so here's my latest: today my python broke again--by popping off of the sink when the off switch was closed on a fill (Bc of the pressure build up). The sink is in the basement & my tank is a floor up. Well not only did I run out of hot water when I was vacuuming the tank (so I had to wait a while before I could refill) I also had to ask somebody to stand in the basement--and turn the water on when I finally refilled. That means I couldn't really check the temp as easily and if it was wrong I couldn't turn the switch off to run down and fix it. So my water is usually 78. Which is where it should be. I had the water at 78 when I went to refill. However--I'm testing the temp as I fill. It's fine, then it goes to 84.5! This went on a few seconds, until I screamed down to the person in the basement to come up, while I raced down to turn the hot water down, however then the new water temps become only 65 degrees! Finally I got the water temp to 77/78 and by the end the overall tank temp was 78. However one of my fish had clamped fins and I hope I didn't inadvertently boil their insides or freeze them out. It was so bad!!

 

Been in the hobby for about 2 months now and just curious to hear everybody’s worst accidents or mistakes. My biggest accident was I accidentally dropped an entire container of fish food in the tank and it went everywhere, immediately vacuumed as much as I could out of the tank, but my fish ate good that day though. This was actually yesterday so planning on doing another water change today to help get more of the spilled food that I may have missed out of the water