My Worst Planted Aquarium Mistake (Please Contribute Stories!)
 

Chuck, I did the same thing with my tank, but fortunately it was a scratch
sort of off to one side. Its still there, but I try not to look at it!

Did you know that Fluorite is quite magnetic? Well, it is. Not surprising
I guess, since it is so high in iron. Anyhow, I got tiny slivers of
fluorite on my magnetic scraper made a mess of the bottom left corner of my
tank. Now, I use my magnetic scraper on our fridge.. it holds up my
daughter's picture nicely!

-Bruce Geist

"Chuck Gadd" wrote in message
...
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

Ealier this year, just when I finally got everything in my new planted
tank going well, a few of my fish got ich. I went to the store and
bought some standard ich medication. As suggested, I turned up the
temperature to 82F to speedup the ich cycle. After a day, half of all
my plants melted away and more fish got ich. I guess I was making a
very bad vegetable soup and none of my fish liked it. I've never used
medication nor turned up the temperature to above 74F since then. All
my plants and fish eventually recovered.

Pffft :)

Try a Fresh DIY mixture (newbie virgin mix), left overnight to bubble away
into the filter intake. Morning woke up to a nice sugary milky yeast
smelling tank, could'nt even see the plants ......(filled the bottle too
high) very funny now but at the time had to redo the whole tank. LOL.
--
"In the beginning, God said the four-dimensional divergence of an
antisymmetric,
second rank tensor equals zero, and there was Light , and it was good."


"yj" wrote in message
oups.com...
Ealier this year, just when I finally got everything in my new planted
tank going well, a few of my fish got ich. I went to the store and
bought some standard ich medication. As suggested, I turned up the
temperature to 82F to speedup the ich cycle. After a day, half of all
my plants melted away and more fish got ich. I guess I was making a
very bad vegetable soup and none of my fish liked it. I've never used
medication nor turned up the temperature to above 74F since then. All
my plants and fish eventually recovered.

On 7 Dec 2004 00:10:44 -0800, "yj" wrote:

Ealier this year, just when I finally got everything in my new planted
tank going well, a few of my fish got ich. I went to the store and
bought some standard ich medication. As suggested, I turned up the
temperature to 82F to speedup the ich cycle. After a day, half of all
my plants melted away and more fish got ich. I guess I was making a
very bad vegetable soup and none of my fish liked it. I've never used
medication nor turned up the temperature to above 74F since then. All
my plants and fish eventually recovered.

After having my 75 gallon tank for 5 months, I decided I wanted to
lower the pH to 7.0 down from 7.8. Since this required chemical to
achieve, I got smart and decided to put diluted hydrochloric acid in
the tank. I was working, but the tank would go back to 7.8 awfully
fast. To this day I can't figure what happened, but after making the
daily adjustment, I saw all the fish cowering in a corner, their eyes
were red and a few were dead. As fast as I could I removed water and
replaced it. Most of the fish recovered, but I lost some that were
quite special. I decided no more chemicals in my tank. That happened
18 months ago. No more accidents and about 3 months ago I even
stopped using charcoal in my filtration. I rely totally on 20% water
changes twice a week.

dick

"Happy'Cam'per" wrote in message
...
Pffft :)

Try a Fresh DIY mixture (newbie virgin mix), left overnight to bubble away
into the filter intake. Morning woke up to a nice sugary milky yeast
smelling tank, could'nt even see the plants ......(filled the bottle too
high) very funny now but at the time had to redo the whole tank. LOL.
--
"In the beginning, God said the four-dimensional divergence of an
antisymmetric,
second rank tensor equals zero, and there was Light , and it was good."

Try that with yeast jello mixture ........ instant red or green tank ;-)
Bob