What is your worst fish keeping experience?

I do water changes with a gravel vac and a 5gal bucket. During one water change, while I was carrying the full bucket up the stairs to dump it, the hose that was sitting with both ends inside the tank got bumped by the hyper cichlids. One end came out of the tank and started draining water.

5gals or so later I come back with my empty bucket and a soaked carpeted floor. Mom was not happy.

 

I handled a disaster very poorly where I had to put all my creatures in containers overnight which resulted in all my shrimp and snails dying even after staying up all night doing water changes. I had to restart my tank completely from scratch for reasons I won’t go into.

My tank stalled while cycling for over a week till I figured out why. When it was FINALLY finished after almost two months, and all my plants were lush and full and beautiful, I had to do large water changes all day long to get the high nitrates down to a safe level. By the time I was finished it was late and I went to bed forgetting to put Prime in. I hadn’t done it through out the day because of how much and how often I was switching out the water. I came home the next day from work and many of my plants had started to melt! I put Prime in right after but they continued to die over the next few days. What didn’t die off completely died back to the barest bones.

Not only did it kill off my plants the chlorine killed off all my BB too so I had to start all over again! Meanwhile all my surviving creatures had to be in a bare bottom tank with daily water changes. :/

 

Well every time I go to “clean” my penn plax cascade filter.....let’s just say the carpeted room becomes a pool (lol)

 

I had the front glass of my tank just decide to crack from top to bottom. It was in the living room and we were watching TV and heard it break.

 

This happened about a year ago, so I have since moved past this type of stupidity. I was doing homework and got bored so I started coloring on my hand with highlighter. At the time I had a 20 gallon tank in my room with a goldfish in it and I noticed my anubias got uprooted so I went to fix it, forgetting about the marker. I stuck my hand into the water and I watched as the ink seeped into the water and slowly turned it green. I flipped out and was crying and calling my friend because I was convinced my fish was going to die. I put him into a bowl and did like a 75% wc because I didn't have enough water conditioner to do more. This all happened at around 10pm.

 

One time I was getting ready to do a water change with one of those self-siphoning gravel vacs. I have never been able to successfully get those started following the instructions, so I would create the suction with my mouth. Well, I usually would start with the vac right near the gravel and this particular time the end was by a lot of fish poop. Needless to say, something happened where I ended up not taking the tube out of my mouth in time, so ended up with a mouthfull of dirty water/fish poop! Nowadays, the vac has to have a ball pump to start the suction.

 

One time I was getting ready to do a water change with one of those self-siphoning gravel vacs. I have never been able to successfully get those started following the instructions, so I would create the suction with my mouth. Well, I usually would start with the vac right near the gravel and this particular time the end was by a lot of fish poop. Needless to say, something happened where I ended up not taking the tube out of my mouth in time, so ended up with a mouthfull of dirty water/fish poop! Nowadays, the vac has to have a ball pump to start the suction.

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One time I was getting ready to do a water change with one of those self-siphoning vacs. I have never been able to successfully get those started following the instructions, so I would create the suction with my mouth. Well, I usually would start with the vac right near the gravel and this particular time the end was by a lot of fish poop. Needless to say, something happened where I ended up not taking the tube out of my mouth in time, so ended up with a mouthfull of dirty water/fish poop! Nowadays, the vac has to have a ball pump to start the suction.

One time my friend and I were changing out the water for an old brine shrimp tank for our teacher. Needless to say my friend did the same thing and got a mouthful of saltwater and dead brine shrimp.

 

I was doing a siphon and missed my 5 gallon bucket, so all that water all over my floor

 

For funny & not sad, my Betta got transferred to his new tank yesterday which my Tetras have been cycling... I couldn’t help but crack up laughing as he just got pummelled by the filter spray bar! Silly boy kept going back to it for another hit.... I’m going to pick up some baffling to reduce the intensity of the filter spray bar so he doesn’t get pushed around so much, but it did make me laugh!!

Other stories are a bit sad, but also kinda funny... as a kid (about 5yrs old) my parents gave me a goldfish & I LOVED it! It was my total favourite! But kid me didn’t understand that you can’t pet your fish like you can your other pets... Well, turns out you can pet your fish, it’s just that they weren’t ‘jumping for joy’ like I thought they were... I went through 8 goldfish before my parents decided I wasn’t going to learn!

My other disaster story was just after I finished high school, I’d kept my 3 gold fish - Fatty, Skinny & Minnie - (no petting them!) for about 3-4yrs. I had my designated fish tank cleaning gear in its own spot in the laundry, but someone in my family must’ve used bleach or something on my cleaning toothbrush I used for the fish tank & my fish went white & kinda dissolved within a day of the water change... ‍♂️‍♂️
No more toothbrush cleaning this time around!! Haha

 

Welllllll this one time I let my brother try to syphon my tank and he nearly killed my Guppies and missed the bucket! That was a lovely experience

 

Ok, I have one so embarrassing, I’m almost too ashamed to tell. (But I will anyway ).
When I first got my fiddler crabs, I looked in the tank one morning and thought one had died. I picked it out and threw it away. Later on, I noticed I still had two crabs. ****? So I thought maybe an extra was sent home from the store and I didnt notice.
A few days later it happened again....then I got it! How stupid of me....its the molted shell!
I had no idea these crabs would molt within a few days of coming home. Imagine how stupid I felt.
At leadt the second time, the crabs got to keep the shell to eat!

 

Well every time I go to “clean” my penn plax cascade filter.....let’s just say the carpeted room becomes a pool (lol)

ME TOO! Taking the cover off always makes a flood for some reason.

 

I know most people have made mistakes during fish keeping, well I made a basic one yesterday....... standard water change and thought I’d add more bio media to my internal filter. Simple.... you lean the filter forward removed media basket fill blah blah blah then you lean the filter back. I guess I forgot to lean the filter back and it was at a low flow setting pointing downward with zero surface water movement for a whole day and night in a planted tank which is far from ideal so this afternoon I had a looking in and seen a few of my fish gasping at surface! So moved filter back up, turned on tank lights and put air stone on and everything is back to normal tonight. Sooo won’t be doing that again.

Anyone else like to share an oops moment feel free.

 

I know most people have made mistakes during fish keeping, well I made a basic one yesterday....... standard water change and thought I’d add more bio media to my internal filter. Simple.... you lean the filter forward removed media basket fill blah blah blah then you lean the filter back. I guess I forgot to lean the filter back and it was at a low flow setting pointing downward with zero surface water movement for a whole day and night in a planted tank which is far from ideal so this afternoon I had a looking in and seen a few of my fish gasping at surface! So moved filter back up, turned on tank lights and put air stone on and everything is back to normal tonight. Sooo won’t be doing that again.

Anyone else like to share an oops moment feel free.

There have been a couple times I have done large water changes and forgot to unplug the filter/heater :/ luckily never had one burst or break on me but it’s always scary to look over and realize the impending doom about to happen. There was also one time I had just drained one of my tanks with my python water changer that I had just gotten a couple days prior. I had set it in the tank to fill it turned on the water and heard the python fall out of the tank so it was just spilling water on the floor. Now the sensible thing to do is turn around and turn off the water then run over and close the valve to clean up the floor but my brain said to close the valve first then bolt back to the sink to turn off the water before the pipe bursts. I was literally next to the sink when I made the choice to close the valve first. Sometimes that just happens :/

 

Heres an Oops moment! I was switching my 6.5g Krib pairs substrate and caused an ammonia spike......will be upgrading Them soon but I now have to deal with daily water changes for a bit

 

Heres an Oops moment! I was switching my 6.5 gallon Krib pairs substrate and caused an ammonia spike......will be upgrading Them soon but I now have to deal with daily water changes for a bit

That’s rough, ammonia spikes are never fun

 

I know most people have made mistakes during fish keeping, well I made a basic one yesterday....... standard water change and thought I’d add more bio media to my internal filter. Simple.... you lean the filter forward removed media basket fill blah blah blah then you lean the filter back. I guess I forgot to lean the filter back and it was at a low flow setting pointing downward with zero surface water movement for a whole day and night in a planted tank which is far from ideal so this afternoon I had a looking in and seen a few of my fish gasping at surface! So moved filter back up, turned on tank lights and put air stone on and everything is back to normal tonight. Sooo won’t be doing that again.

Anyone else like to share an oops moment feel free.

Filled my planted tank higher than usual submersing my spray bar overnight, my Gourami and Corys were fine but my Cardinal Tetra suffered, I lost my 2 large adults

 

Mine was buying a plant that just dropped to the gravel with weight and was told it would last 2wks and OMG 4 days it lasted and overnight it frayed away dead from the top
My water was floating bits of dead plant so I had to do a right water change and netting to shift the lot out, never again

 

ooops today. Realized that though I'm careful to test the water in my tanks, there was one I kept forgetting to check and vac and w/c for many weeks! (it's 20 gallon with two three inch fish, so that's probably why I put it off, although that's wrong). Anyway, tested the water about an hour ago. Perfect! Lucky fish!

 

ooops today. Realized that though I'm careful to test the water in my tanks, there was one I kept forgetting to check and vac and w/c for many weeks! (it's 20 gallon with two three inch fish, so that's probably why I put it off, although that's wrong). Anyway, tested the water about an hour ago. Perfect! Lucky fish!

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