Dumb/Foolish purchases

[Scaperoot]

     What's the most foolish/dumb purchase you've made since getting started in the hobby? I was cleaning out an old crate yesterday and found this bottle of river gravel that cost $18. This was a few years ago, when I was wrapped in trying to replicate a scape I had seen on IG. I went into a fish store (co op partner store btw) and spoke to the owner about getting my first rimless aquarium. An hour later, and he was ringing me up on a purchase that came to over $300. The tank was less than $100. The rest was spent on river stones, gravel, plants, filters,  etc. The owner even convinced me to get a mist maker. No one forced me to spend like that, but it was by far the most foolish way I've spent $$ since getting into fishkeeping. $18 for a small bottle of river gravel that I could easily find for free or much cheaper. Pretty embarassing😅 Worst part is that I used the mister once, and totally went in a different direction with the scape. I never went back to that store. 

[Retrophyllum_minus]

Ooof. So many crappy (although some were "high end" and expensive) HOB filters that I tried in my tanks before deciding I didn't like their flow or other features. I've switched to the ACO sponge filters and like them so much more so far. 

[Retrophyllum_minus]

Oh, and I was setting up my 20 long a few weeks ago and used a caribsea sand that I ended up not liking and I emptied the tank, removed it all and dumped it outside, and went with a larger gravel instead. So that was a bit of a waste. But realistically I wasn't going to end up ever using it. 

Edited Monday at 03:27 PM by Retrophyllum_minus
Typo

[TOtrees]

Tanks that I might need, someday, at some point. One of my first hobby growth purchases was 4 tanks from a single seller, for like $100 (CDN). All different, 3 of them were custom jobs, one was 4ft x 10" x 10", another was a 20" x 20" acrylic cube, maybe 14" high, but with a slanted front wall that wrapped/bent over to the top. The only opening was a ~5x10 inch hole in the top. Neither of those got used. They were rehomed, but what a waste of my time. 

Add to that I picked up a 40 breeder from Petco in Niagara Falls NY on a road trip across the border, just bc I wanted to experience their sale prices. Yes it was way cheaper than the equivalent up here. But that was 2 years ago, and it's been on a shelf in my garage since then. 

On the topic of sponges, I bought an even dozen of the ACO nanos around 2 years ago, and ended up not liking them. I have like 10 still new not used. I'll take some to fish club meeting tomorrow night 🙂 

[Retrophyllum_minus]

On 9/16/2024 at 11:16 AM, TOtrees said:

On the topic of sponges, I bought an even dozen of the ACO nanos around 2 years ago, and ended up not liking them. I have like 10 still new not used. I'll take some to fish club meeting tomorrow night 🙂

I've used the small and medium, have a large to try out as well. 

And as a side note, and a bit off topic, I really wish we had an aquarium club in my state. We don't. 

[mynameisnobody]

I purchased a hob with the cartridges about 30 years ago. I still regret that purchase and I haven’t used one in at least 25 years. I nominate this and betta water as 2 of the worst aquarium products out there. 

[Retrophyllum_minus]

On 9/16/2024 at 11:37 AM, mynameisnobody said:

betta water

I just saw this for the first time in a store recently. I think my mouth hung open for a minute. What the heck? Why?

[Beach Cruiser]

Probably better to call it "uninformed", but mine is cheap lights when i started on planted tanks.  In hindsight, it would have been much more efficient in both time & money to buy one really good light.

[mynameisnobody]

@Retrophyllum_minus this is probably an unpopular opinion, but I believe Betta people are 90% of the time new keepers and will spend on unnecessary stuff thinking it benefits the fish. It don’t and they usually exit the hobby pretty quickly. 

[Retrophyllum_minus]

Yeah, I think this is probably correct honestly.  I helped my friend get her two female Koi bettas set up, and she has had them before in the past and does well with them but for the most part I would say people that keep them either exclusively keep them, and that's it, and do so on and off over many years or they do it once and then never do it again. 

On 9/16/2024 at 12:30 PM, mynameisnobody said:

Betta people are 90% of the time new keepers

 

[Mississippi fish guy]

Mine would probably be buying a cheap hob filter from Walmart for what was at the time my quarantine tank. The filter soon broke so I bought another and it broke so I bought another. I think the third one lasted me quite a bit longer than the other two but it did eventually break.
 

Also I bought cuttle bones because I thought they were dissolving blocks that would get my 10 gallon set to grow out the guppy fry that I have. I have no idea if the cuttle bones are useful for aquariums.

[Retrophyllum_minus]

On 9/16/2024 at 1:28 PM, Mississippi fish guy said:

Mine would probably be buying a cheap hob filter from Walmart for what was at the time my quarantine tank. The filter soon broke so I bought another and it broke so I bought another. I think the third one lasted me quite a bit longer than the other two but it did eventually break.
 

Also I bought cuttle bones because I thought they were dissolving blocks that would get my 10 gallon set to grow out the guppy fry that I have. I have no idea if the cuttle bones are useful for aquariums.

Cuttle bones are for birds. 
 

And yeah my luck with HOBs hasn't been good. The Marineland one I have now was good but too much flow for the intended tank so I switched to ACO sponge filters there. 

[clownbaby]

Yeah, I would have to second that  most gravel and sand (and really any rocks) is a huge rip off in my book. I mean sometimes it makes sense - if you have a scape in mind, you are not going to be able to find something like ohko stone outside in nature or for super duper cheap/free on second-hand shops... or if you want a specific color, material (e.g. for hard / basic water types) that all makes sense. But the fact that pet stores can sell 5 pounds of round river rocks for 20 bucks or so is crazy. Or basic mixed grey sand. My brain looks at that and thinks: 'havent these people heard of going outside with a bucket and collecting things???' 

And even for specifics, like cmon, the prices are pretty unreasonable in my book. Even if you want white sand, 10 bucks for a 2 - 3 pound bag is crazy expensive. FOR SAND. Thankfully more and more people are realizing and sharing that play sand / pea gravel / etc from hardware stores are much cheaper :]

[lefty o]

dont feel bad, im sure we have all bought some stuff that was nutz just because we had an idea.

[Pwnedn00b]

Bacter AE. Not because it's a bad or totally useless product, but because it's really easy to overdose it and kill fish instead of speed-starting biofilm for aufwuchs eaters. Ask me how I know. 

One container is also way more than any normal fish keeper would need. 

[NOLANANO]

On 9/16/2024 at 12:56 PM, clownbaby said:

havent these people heard of going outside with a bucket and collecting things???' 

I totally get what you are saying but I think grabbing things from outside seems daunting to newer fish keepers because you don't know exactly what you are putting in the tank and you aren't sure if its clean.  Getting it from a petstore or LFS at least provides the assurance that it is safe to put in the tank.  I'd also urge people to check out local stone wholesalers to get cheaper rocks and gravel.

I'd add my worst purchase was a cheap heater. About six months into my 75G planted tank I noticed that all my fish were hugging the bottom and were not very active at all. I eventually came across a post on one of the fish boards of a heater frying someone's fish so I decided to see what happened if I unplugged my heater. almost instantly all the fish were swimming normally again. I am fairly certain that the heater was heating normally but it was also sending a small amount of electricity into my tank and electrocuting my fish.

[AllFishNoBrakes]

I feel like I’ve been pretty lucky over the past 4 years. I don’t have a ton of things I don’t need, or haven’t used. Me looking at things and comparing them to everything I can find, and then really thinking about it before making a purchase has paid off!

At this point I have some little internal, open top filters that are basically useless. I liked them when I was doing basically no flow tanks, lol. I’ve since realized I actually like more flow and have upgraded basically all my tanks. I net style breeder box that I’ll never use again is another one that’s gonna sit in a drawer until the end of time now that I’ve had the Ziss box for a couple of years. 
 

The big one that stands out in my mind at this point is probably all the Ziss air stones I have that are irrelevant with the air collars and easy flow kits. Cory recently mentioned you can make co2 diffusers out of those, so I guess if I look on the bright side I have a bunch of co2 diffusers waiting to be used! 😂

[Mississippi fish guy]

On 9/16/2024 at 12:56 PM, clownbaby said:

Thankfully more and more people are realizing and sharing that play sand / pea gravel / etc from hardware stores are much cheaper :]

I didn’t know you could get pea gravel from a hardware store. I will have to remember this for future reference.

[HelplessNewbie]

I bought 1 gallon of ich-x, but I only keep mostly nano fish. Silly! I estimate it will take 10 to 15 years before I use it up. It will be expired before then.

[ange]

My personal uninformed purchase was way, way, way back in the day when I bought Bettafix for one of my bettas when it had finrot. I felt awful when it never got better or healed and I have come an incredibly long way when it comes to treating injuries and illness in my animals.

On 9/16/2024 at 2:09 PM, Pwnedn00b said:

Bacter AE. Not because it's a bad or totally useless product, but because it's really easy to overdose it and kill fish instead of speed-starting biofilm for aufwuchs eaters. Ask me how I know. 

One container is also way more than any normal fish keeper would need.

I'd love to see Bacter AE sold in those little specimen container jars that are used in laboratories. I use an old tardigrade jar from Carolina Biological as a container for those 7g envelopes of yeast. That seems like the perfect amount to reasonably use. I bought a 35g container almost 5 years ago and it's still mostly full. I can't imagine anyone going through the "full-size" 70g container. Only issue (from a product point of view) is that it wouldn't be easy to package with a scoop at that point but I feel like most of use are using toothpicks to dose our aquaria anyway.

[mynameisnobody]

@Mississippi fish guy try finding a landscaping supply store or rock quarry near you. You’d be astonished at how much you get for so little. I just purchased roughly 60lbs of large river rock for $22. I saw dragonstone and seiryu stone for $1.40/lb. It’s an hour drive from me, but it’s Christmas every time I go. 

[Tony s]

On 9/16/2024 at 1:28 PM, Mississippi fish guy said:

I have no idea if the cuttle bones are useful for aquariums.

They can be. They function the same as any calcium source. like a wondershell basically or crushed coral. as long as it's been prepared properly.

My biggest mistakes. Complete impulse purchases. I can be financially responsible for a very long time. Then I can't. And usually, I buy things that look good, function well. but completely the wrong size for what I want. I bought a 45g back in august with stand. 1/2 off. but It's too small for the goldfish we were looking at getting. I can get incredibly annoyed with myself this way.

[mynameisnobody]

@Tony s dude I’ve wished for mini goldfish for years, if they existed, I think they’d be one of the most popular fish in the hobby. A man can dream…

[Woowala]

It being a pretty niche market, basically everything made for aquariums is price gouged to hell and back, and doubly so for subsets of the aquarium market, like reefs and shrimp.  If I can find a similar product but not made for fish tanks, it'll be 1/10th the price.  The trouble is recognizing when you're being penny wise and pound foolish, but in general if something is convenient or irreplaceable I'll spend the money, if not I won't (looking at you hardscape, lids, lighting).  Other things are just a racket imo, like bottled bacteria and almost all water additives.

But every niche hobby is the same way.  I'm just happy I'm not into golf. 

[clownbaby]

On 9/16/2024 at 12:14 PM, NOLANANO said:

I totally get what you are saying but I think grabbing things from outside seems daunting to newer fish keepers because you don't know exactly what you are putting in the tank and you aren't sure if its clean.  Getting it from a petstore or LFS at least provides the assurance that it is safe to put in the tank.  I'd also urge people to check out local stone wholesalers to get cheaper rocks and gravel.

Oh certainly, I get it! And I've had insect larvae in my tank and (what I thought were) parasitic worms. That's why nowadays I highly recommend Father Fish for anyone who is starting out. He has a junk ton of experience but also knows lots of scientific information. He puts it together into a logical concept without overloading you imo. I disagree with him on some things but there are a lot of amazing pieces of advice he puts out there. 

I guess I am a little bit more risk-takey. Like, honestly, if a weird animal ends up in my tank, I can just take my fish out temporarily and remove the gross critter. (And then I will probably keep the gross critter as a pet.) Maybe that's not everyone's jam ... but thats okay! 😅 Still, I would encourage newbies and experienced folk in this hobby to collect stuff from outside. Even just one rock that you like the look of. I have gotten a lot more joy finding my own rocks and wood pieces rather than the ones I've purchased, simply because I get a lot of pride from saying "I found that driftwood!" Just my personal preference though. 🙂 

And of course, cleanliness and legality are valid concerns. When in doubt, don't take it. 

On 9/16/2024 at 12:47 PM, Mississippi fish guy said:

I didn’t know you could get pea gravel from a hardware store. I will have to remember this for future reference.

Yeah!!! If you're based in the U.S. (which I assume u are based on ur username xD) Home Depot sells a 20 pound bag of rounded pea gravel for like 5 bucks, I used it in my 30 gal for accent rocks and it is great! It is mixed color (I am unsure if they sell solid color - they very well may,). The only 'downside' is I had to rinse it quite a bit more than I did with gravel I bought from the pet shop... but for me, that was worth it because I am cheap haha