On Mon, 06 Jan 2003 12:06:31 -0800, Dave Millman
wrote:

Here's a chance to give back to the group: Contribute the story of your
worst planted aquarium mistake, and how you fixed it. Here's mine:

I made a BIG mistake when I first set up my 75g tank. I spent all
spare cash buying the tank, stand, hood, CO2 rig, etc. I didn't have
any extra cash to buy fluorite, and didn't want this beautiful tank
sitting empty for a month waiting for the money. So, I used gravel
that I collected from a local river. It was hard work, collecting,
rinsing and cleaning it, but in the end, it looked very nice. I
filled the tank with the gravel, filled it with water, then over the
next few days I added a few plants and got the lights set up right.
After about a week, I was ready to start doing real planting. I
noticed a good bit of green spot algae on the front glass. I had one
of those cool magnetic algae scrapers to clean the glass on this
(relatively!!!!) massive tank. Back and forth a few times with the
scraper, and it was working well. Got it all cleaned and it looked
good. I had just removed the scraper, when I noticed I missed a spot
right in the middle of the tank. Instead of just using a normal
scraper or cleaning pad, I stuck the magnetic cleaner in again.
Unfortunately, I didn't notice that I had apparently gotten a little
to close to the bottom on the earlier cleaning, and some of that free
river gravel contained some particles that were magnetic. I pulled
the magnetic algae scraper, and gouged a 4 inch long scratch right
across the middle of the glass!

I threw the magnetic algae scraper in the trash, emptied the tank
(completely, water, gravel, etc) turned it around so the scratch was
now on the back, and refilled it. Haven't used one of those magnetic
scrapers since then.


Chuck Gadd
http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua