Confessions of a Bad Aquarist

[Sapere_Ceta]

Oh my, my confessions are mostly just me being an embarrassment, lol!

I tend to have memory issues, and they always happen to start at terrible times. When I water change, the water will get low enough to where I have to shut my heaters off. I’ll unplug them, and finish up my water changes like the responsible aquarist that I am, only to wake up the next day and find the water to be an ice bath. Thankfully, there are only plants in the tank that didn’t seem to mind. This has happened three times in the past week 🤫

I used to pull the heaters out at times on my previous aquariums to clean them off. Thinking I unplugged them, I would lay them down on a napkin or a pillow or maybe a couch cushion (another flaw of mine is putting aquarium items on places they shouldn’t be). A few minutes later and I start to smell smoke, find the heater, and realize it’s on and running still.
 

There’s times I would boil items to add to previous aquariums and completely forget I was boiling anything at all. I’ve burned through so many pans... so many.. 

I’ve spilled every brand new liquid product I’ve purchased because my hands like giving out at inconvenient times. All of my fertilizer, for instance, is less than half full and that was  on the first day of getting it. 
 

I have extremely bad perception issues and walk into walls and furniture almost every time I’m carrying a bucket of dirty water to pour down the drain, and every time, it spills. My mom and grandpa are always wondering why the carpet, the couch, or the kitchen rug smell funny because of it. 

And last but not least, I’ve been trying to properly cycle the first aquarium I have had in many years. It’s been going well, and I’m at the nitrite spike phase of the cycle. I browsed eBay, making the mistake to look at fish, and now I have a fish shipping to me soon that I have had to set up a holding tank for and will have to do probably daily water changes on. Couldn’t resist his cute little fishy face, he had a video of him and everything 🥺

[TifNee837]

I have a slight list myself!

• I do not quarantine.
• I have got a massive amount of filtration in my 60 gallon tank - like, enough to filter an almost 200+ gallon tank --- and I only keep small fish (livebearers)
•  Have only done a fishless cycle one time (and that was only to prove to myself it could be done...by ME lol)
• I hardly ever do more than 15-25% water changes on the 60 gallon (one of the HoBs I have is a Danner EZ Clean - just Google it and look at the water chang option it comes with/has - yeah.) ***EXCEPT I don't use the gravel vac "option" - as I'd have to remove all my media and whatnot to fit the bag into it for that....***
• Which leads to the next one - I don't even know when the last time I gravel vac'd was! #1 bc of the way I remove the water for changes but also - plants. And some spots in the tank (esp around the edges of the glass) look SUPER gross!
• I have 6 tanks currently - buuuut my hubby only knows about 5 of them so far! 🤫🤫🤫 {it's been unseen almost a whole month now! 😁😁😁)

 

I do have more for this 'list' , but my brain is getting too sleepy to remember the rest I'd thought of originally when starting this reply! 😂🤣 so I'm sure I will be back to add more!

[Dawn T]

Well...

1. I'm not consistent with water changes. At. All. Thankfully, my tanks are sort of lightly stocked. Both have a pleco in them, so... probably enough said there.
2. I'm not consistent about quarantining new stock. I decide about that depending on where I got the fish. Anything comes from Petsmart, it gets quarantined. I learned too many times ending up with an ich infestation from new fish from there that I finally learned that lesson. You'd think one time would've taught me, but... not so much. 🙄
3. I only recently started testing my water parameters on any sort of consistent basis. I keep a notebook, too, rather than rely on my memory (never a good idea). Still not being consistent about it - like once a week or whatever - though.

As for past sins - worst one that comes to mind was trusting a pet store employee who told me my 55g tank would be "perfect" for a pair of baby oscars and an 8" long common pleco. If I'd known then what I know now, I would've kept my community fish in the 55g and put the oscars and pleco in the 125g I had at the time. The 125g was so lightly stocked, the 55g would've been perfect for the community. Definitely got things backwards there.

[Dawn T]

Oh, and forgot to mention - a habit I'm still trying to break - I have a tendency to OVERclean my tanks when I do water changes. Gravel vac to the extreme included. Been willing myself to STOP that, but my OCD says I'm SUPPOSED TO! LOL

[Lemon]

i think i waterchange to much lol

whenever I'm bored or I need a break from my brothers and sisters i will waterchange so my tank used to get 20-50% daily not as much now as I have catappa leaf's and i want to keep the tannins 

[demicent]

Yesterday I found a baby snail under my fingernail, and another one on my kitchen towel.  

[demicent]

I can't use my fingerprints to open my cell phone anymore.  My right hand is pruny from being in the water, and the fingers of my left hand are perpetually super glued.

[CorydorasEthan]

 I have a long list of my confessions:

• The first time I kept a fish tank, I didn't cycle, overstocked on the first day, and added the whole bag of fish and water into the tank. This ended up killing almost all the fish, and I still feel guilty for their deaths.
• I overstock my current aquarium because I feel like I need every type of Corydoras I come across.
• I don't follow the "one inch per gallon rule" as I believe it is not very accurate. Despite my opinion that there are better stocking rules, I don't follow any and just kind of estimate how many fish I can keep (of course, I do quite a bit of research).
• I get very annoyed and angry at people who don't keep Corydoras in groups of more than three, yet I always seem to "rescue" lonely corys (only cory in their tank) from the pet shop and don't have enough space in my tank to provide them a sufficient amount of members to fit their social needs. This leads me to just keep a couple of each type, breaking my own rules.
• I get mad with my siblings or parents when they walk loudly next to the aquarium, as the vibrations and shadows "scare" the pygmy corys and the young SAEs.
• Another overstocking problem, I always think fish or other tank inhabitants are the solution to every problem I have. Hair algae? Amano Shrimp! Black beard algae? SAEs! Pest snails? Loaches or Assassin snails! Shy fish? More schooling fish! and so on. I never get rid of these "cleaner fish" so end up with an overstocked tank half full of cleaning crews (in my 29 gallon I have Amano shrimp, bristlenose pleco, SAEs, assassin snails, and was planning on getting Otocinlus, but now realize that would be WAY too many fish, especially with my various corys, guppies, and gourami I already have).
• I always say when I want to upgrade my tank size "this is the biggest it's going to get, I won't need/want a tank any bigger" to my parents, yet I always seem to want more and more. I have gone from a 2.5 gallon to a 29 gallon due to this. Also because of this constant want for more fish, I always try to bend the rules of my parents (getting an extra "breeding tank" for the guppies I already have but also planning on getting some habrosus corys for that tank), or bending my own rules, like "Oh I can fit that new fish I found at the LFS in if I sell these off" and then don't sell anybody off and overstock the tank.
• Lastly, I don't know if this is bad, but I feel responsible for the deaths of all my fish, and always blame it on myself when anyone dies. My belief is that since the fish are under my care, it is my full responsibility to make sure that they have the best chance at living, even though I know it isn't possible to save all of them. This is why I don't like it when even baby guppies are eaten by other fish in the tank, and I try not to keep anything that will eat them in the tank. One exception is with pest snails. I am fine letting Assassin snails eat them, but not removing them manually from the tank and throwing them out to suffocate or something like that.

Edited January 25, 2021 by CorydorasEthan

[Fishdude]

I missed the confessions thread - would people be mad if I brought this back (too bad, it's back anyway)?

I've made a few confessions recently involving maintenance and my tendency not to cycle tanks before adding fish, and changing water sporadically when I feel like lugging 35 pounds of water around in a Lowe's bucket.

I have a confession/oops moment that happened today in a tank that had only recently gotten some love and cleaning and whatnot. My 40 gallon office tank had deceased mystery snail shells and decayed plants and just all manner of muck and somehow I really didn't lose any fish other than one corydora (probably from not getting enough to eat). 

So I've done a couple changes in the last few days, removed a lot of plants, gravel vacuumed...I had put in some nice foam pads from the Co-op into a HOB filter and my sponge hadn't been cleaned in awhile so I figured one of these times...well today I noticed the top had popped up on my HOB which often means a clog of some kind pushed up the basket of media. I thought "Oh I should pull this out and see what's up." I was...wrong.

6 months of mulm and decay and muck POURED out of the bottom of that still-running filter into the recently cleaned tank. It looked like a snow globe of dead plant material. I screamed. My wife checked on me to see if I'd seen a spider because it was the same sound I make when I see a big spider that I wasn't expecting to see. Needless to say, I did a lot more cleaning...and vacuuming...I wholesale replaced the sponge filter with a new larger sponge filter from the Co-op (less likely to clog). And now things are running fine (I think).

So I confess, this was not my finest moment and that tank had BETTER STAY CLEAN now.