Share Your Failed Ideas Thread

[TheDukeAnumber1]

It seems too often that I have failed ideas. Things that are sometimes interesting and maybe worth learning from but aren't worth a new thread. I am making this thread as a singular place to share them, for me, and for anyone else who wants to share any failed ideas too.

To start it off, I'm not a huge fan of picking eggs off of yarn spawning mops and I made an attempt at designing a 3d printed modular chain for my rice fish to lay eggs on. My test was not successful. Back to yarn for now.

 

 

[lefty o]

my idea's never fail. sometimes they lead to better ideas though.😜

[Cory]

I love this. I don't have anything right now, but most things fail for me 😛 I'll love seeing what to avoid or change when I try it.

[Odd Duck]

These shelves were a fail.  I thought they would hold enough substrate that the Jack Dempseys and plecos would not be able disrupt the plants if I put a layer of rocks around them.  I was sooooooo wrong.

Edited August 3, 2021 by Odd Duck

[Hobbit]

Ooo great thread idea. My most recent fail was trying to buy gravel from the hardware store and just pick out the pieces that were aquarium safe. After hours of washing, sorting, then leaning over vinegar in the dark, staring at rocks with a magnifying glass, I realized that none of the rocks were safe enough to use in bulk. But 50 lbs for $5?? I just had to try!!

[CalmedByFish]

On behalf of hundreds of people, I'm going to get "buying a livebearer who isn't pregnant" out of the way. 

[Keeg]

"Duckweed can't be that bad"/ "My tank will be different"

 

PS: I love it, but I didn't expect it to go ZOOOOM 

[JettsPapa]

I  bought some cubes of freeze-dried brine shrimp very early in my fish keeping experience.  My idea was "I'll just put one in the tank first and see how fast they eat it, then decide how many more."

I soon discovered that one was WAY too much.  That thing started absorbing water and swelling and throwing off shrimp, and I was beginning to think it would never stop.  I finally got a net and scooped out as much as I could, but after that I crumbled them up and only fed a small portion.

[eatyourpeas]

Thinking my pea puffers would go for frozen food. I got "you gotta be kidding look"!

Back to our regular programming and live bits.

[JettsPapa]

On 8/3/2021 at 9:39 AM, eatyourpeas said:

Thinking my pea puffers would go for frozen food. I got "you gotta be kidding look"!

Back to our regular programming and live bits.

They won't eat frozen blood worms?

[CalmedByFish]

On 8/3/2021 at 9:00 AM, JettsPapa said:

I  bought some cubes of freeze-dried brine shrimp very early in my fish keeping experience. 

I soon discovered that one was WAY too much. 

I did exactly that! Ended up throwing away the can.

[Dancing Matt]

I put 7 or so ghost shrimp in a 40 gal with a female betta (to see if I could add cherry shrimp). I thought she may get one or two but the rest would be able to hide... The next day there was one left. I don't trust my bettas with any tank mates at this point.

[Patrick_G]

I decided that if spot treating with Excel works well then taking out the plants and painting it on straight from the bottle would work really well. 🙁

[Fonske]

On 8/3/2021 at 11:57 PM, Dancing Matt said:

put 7 or so ghost shrimp in a 40 gal with a female betta (to see if I could add cherry shrimp)

I also had the idea that since my ghost shrimps were fine with a blue ram, cherries should be ok with her as well. Nope. Ghosts are called ghosts for a reason, I guess, and they were fine, but the red cherries were mercilessly slaughtered. Poor guys. 

[Torrey]

On 8/2/2021 at 10:32 PM, Hobbit said:

Ooo great thread idea. My most recent fail was trying to buy gravel from the hardware store and just pick out the pieces that were aquarium safe. After hours of washing, sorting, then leaning over vinegar in the dark, staring at rocks with a magnifying glass, I realized that none of the rocks were safe enough to use in bulk. But 50 lbs for $5?? I just had to try!!

I have a thread for you to read, that has made aquarium keeping so much more affordable and enjoyable!!!!

There's a separate chapter on wood, on rocks, on filters, on aeration, and I was literally up all night trying to find articles and research to disprove "Dave" and I can't find any yet.

 

Plus, he references Cory!

 

Oops, this link is on ammonia/nitrite/nitrate.

 

Scroll to the very bottom to locate the link for safe rocks and gravel.

 

https://aquariumscience.org/index.php/5-ammonia-nitrite-nitrate-and-chlorine/

[eatyourpeas]

On 8/3/2021 at 7:58 AM, JettsPapa said:

They won't eat frozen blood worms?

Nope. Only live ones. They'll look at it, then look at me, then look at it again, then look at me with those "how could you?" eyes.

[Hobbit]

@Torrey ah yes, Dave! Good info on his website. Not always a fan of his tone, but the things he says about rocks make a LOT of sense to me! I wish I would have read his article before spending hours on this project. At least I got clear sinuses out of it.

[JettsPapa]

On 8/3/2021 at 12:04 PM, eatyourpeas said:

Nope. Only live ones. They'll look at it, then look at me, then look at it again, then look at me with those "how could you?" eyes.

I was asking because mine will.  They examine them for a while first, and while they're doing that a tetra will often swoop in and get it first, but they will eat them.

[eatyourpeas]

On 8/3/2021 at 12:16 PM, JettsPapa said:

I was asking because mine will.  They examine them for a while first, and while they're doing that a tetra will often swoop in and get it first, but they will eat them.

They will be most entertained by watching the dead bloodworm sink to the bottom, while doing the look thing. If it is dead, they won't touch it. They seem to prefer wiggly food.

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

This is an excellent topic. Pretty much everyone has one or a few. No photos but Ill try to get detailed enough to paint the picture.

The vision was a medication free aquaponics system where I could raise cooler water farm fish and eventually crayfish. They would be housed in a 150 gallon sump below fruits and vegetables up top so we could eat the veggies, feed the leaves and trimmings back into the stock tank, and have semi sustainable food sources in the house year round. 

 I did a Rubbermaid 4245-00-GRAY Structural Foam 150 gallon stock tank tank as a sump system with a pond pump that constant flowed into two separate approximately 30" * 45" * 8" deep on a steel shelving unit that the stock tank sat within and the beds rested on the top shelf of the shelving.  I did a bell siphon on each bed which fed down a pvc pipe back into the sump. I staggered the fill of 2nd bed by cutting off the flow until after the first bed was 3/4 full to keep the overflow a little more consistent back into the stock tank sump. 

Failure since I am never going with that idea inside the house again but more a "learning moment" since I used those lessons to inform other ideas I use now. :

The system was ridiculously loud one of the two bell siphon was going every 10 minutes, the stock tank was not covered as much as I would have preferred to limit evaporation and a little bit of splash, the grow beds were adding too much to the humidity of the house, the temperature of the water was actually too cold for optimal growth of edible crops.  Moving 200lbs lava rock down stairs was really not an enjoyable experience for me and the fish were not a great fit for the system long term.

It helped me to figure out the overflow racking systems I use for some of my projects now, moved me to working on breeding fish which is more fun for me anyway, and got me to realize that I need a heater for fall-spring up here on even the cool water species of fish.

[Jeff]

I created a ring using airline tubing to keep Salvinia Minima together as I didn't want to have the entire top covered; but it was a huge pain. There were always some that would get out of the ring, and the ring made water changes difficult. 

[gjcarew]

On 8/3/2021 at 1:37 PM, mountaintoppufferkeeper said:

The system was ridiculously loud one of the two bell siphon was going every 10 minutes, the stock tank was not covered as much as I would have preferred to limit evaporation and a little bit of splash, the grow beds were adding too much to the humidity of the house, the temperature of the water was actually too cold for optimal growth of edible crops.  Moving 200lbs lava rock down stairs was really not an enjoyable experience for me and the fish were not a great fit for the system long term.

Oof. I tried this in a basement apartment because I wanted to be able to grow herbs (I like cooking). I thought about a bell siphon but ended up just doing deepwater culture. Some things I learned:

1. Herbs need sunlight or at least a LOT of artificial light to grow well.

2. The conditions that are best for keeping fish are not always the conditions that are best for growing plants

3. Gardening and fishkeeping are fun. Separately. Just plant stuff outside, or get a P-patch lot. It's more satisfying and effective. 

Ironically I stopped following that last bit of advice -- in my current apartment I have a 20 gallon patio pond with ricefish. I used the Blumat automatic watering system to run a syphon from the ricefish pond to my patio plants (herbs, tomatoes, peppers). They are automatically watered with pond water, and every week I do a water change from my indoor tanks and refill the pond. It typically drains 5-7 gallons per week. I think it's so much easier than my previous setup because the systems are separate-- I can fertilize the plants separately and don't have to worry about hurting the fish.

[Dark River Aquatics]

“Just one more tank and that’s IT”

 

😅

[TheDukeAnumber1]

Recent epic fail for me........ 😑

I have a 100g pond that I had rice fish in and I live in IL not too far from Chicago. I really wanted to make an attempt at overwintering this pond since I knew how cold tolerant these fish are. I knew it would freeze solid if I did nothing so I calculated how much $ in electricity I would be willing to spend and threw in a 25W heater and let things go. There were spirts where there were several inches of ice on the pond and I could see the fish doing well under the ice, but once 15F with 15mph winds for days hit..... well that did it in.

I tipped it over and there wasn't a single sign of liquid water.... In hindsight I knew 25W isn't much heat at all, thinking maybe there will be a pocket of water the heater will keep liquid,.... I've played with electronics and heat dissipation enough to know this had no chance of working out. I thought I would be ok with losses but now I'm very frusturated with myself. The only good news is that I kept their spawn inside, so in the upcomming summer tub their fry will live on.

The lesson here was don't let wishful thinking override what you already know to be true.

On the side I tested a smaller tub placed by my furnace exaust full of water, no fish. Hoping the heat would keep the pond from freezing. Nope, it's one huge block of ice with only a small portion still thawed.

In you live in a place with Chicago winters your ponds need to be in ground or provided with substantial heating.

Until my next fail...

 

[WhitecloudDynasty]

On 1/30/2022 at 7:08 PM, TheDukeAnumber1 said:

Recent epic fail for me........ 😑

I have a 100g pond that I had rice fish in and I live in IL not too far from Chicago. I really wanted to make an attempt at overwintering this pond since I knew how cold tolerant these fish are. I knew it would freeze solid if I did nothing so I calculated how much $ in electricity I would be willing to spend and threw in a 25W heater and let things go. There were spirts where there were several inches of ice on the pond and I could see the fish doing well under the ice, but once 15F with 15mph winds for days hit..... well that did it in.

I tipped it over and there wasn't a single sign of liquid water.... In hindsight I knew 25W isn't much heat at all, thinking maybe there will be a pocket of water the heater will keep liquid,.... I've played with electronics and heat dissipation enough to know this had no chance of working out. I thought I would be ok with losses but now I'm very frusturated with myself. The only good news is that I kept their spawn inside, so in the upcomming summer tub their fry will live on.

The lesson here was don't let wishful thinking override what you already know to be true.

On the side I tested a smaller tub placed by my furnace exaust full of water, no fish. Hoping the heat would keep the pond from freezing. Nope, it's one huge block of ice with only a small portion still thawed.

In you live in a place with Chicago winters your ponds need to be in ground or provided with substantial heating.

Until my next fail...

 

I use this