Fishkeeping mistakes I made

[VioletThePurple]

• Lack of water changes. As a kid my parents did tell me to do water changes on my tank, but I never kept up with them. Even though I didn't test the water, I'm assuming my early fish deaths were from bad water quality, because when the weak fish were moved to new water to monitor them in, they perked up and were a little more active, passed away, nonetheless.
• Not having a heater. I didn't have a heater until I did research on bettas. Then I thought only bettas needed a heater. Later on, I learned that nearly every fish needs a heater.
• Doing water changes with everything plugged in. When I did finally get around to doing regular water changes, I didn't unplug the filter, so I broke a number of filters by doing this.
• Not feeding a community betta tank when I was away from vacation. I could've had a pet sitter for them, but I decided not to since I figured it would be worse if they were overfed. The lack of food made the betta kill a tankmate. (I had them together several months before this, I'm pretty sure it was the sudden lack of food that caused her to lash out.)
• Flushing dead fish down the toilet. I think this is a common one, and it took me a while to not do this.
• Putting corydoras on gravel. I was too negligent to notice the gravel had completely eroded their barbels. Which made them more susceptible to disease, which is what killed them.
• Saying cichild as sicklid.

 

[GaryE]

How else would you pronounce Cichlid? That is how you say it.

You're in pretty good company on most of those mistakes. I dount the Betta killed a tankmate, but if one died, he would have joined in the scavenging if he was hungry.

 

[Uberhoust]

Most I agree with, but I too wonder how you pronounce cichlid your original seemed correct.

I still keep most of my filters running during cleanings and water changes. I just make sure I don't draw the water down past the intakes. If I have a vertical heater I try to remember to unplug those, but the horizontal ones I leave going too.

I will say that I have lost a fish due to lack of food while I was on vacation. I still mostly follow no feeding at vacations but if I go for more than a week I use a feeder now.

 

[Ichthys]

I never unplug or switch off anything when I do water changes. Canister intakes are just below half way down the tanks so that I can do 50% changes. Internals are stuck to the glass and I just move them lower by sliding them. Believe it or not, HOB filters have never caught on in the UK. There’s hardly a shop here that sells them, or an aquarist that uses them. I can literally count on one hand the number I’ve seen in 51 years of fishkeeping.

Heater/stats are almost horizontal, in the lower half, so they don’t need to be switched off. I’ll never have one vertical because then the heat goes straight to the stat, which switches them on and off more than is necessary, shortening the life of the stat (imo).

Cichlid is pronounced sick-lid.

I’ve heard them all… Chick-lid, Chillid, Beta (a very common misspelling and mispronunciation), Chara-sin (it’s Kara-sin), Gwar-mee, Plate-ee, Goop-ee, Bircher (It’s spelt Bicher, and it’s pronounced Bish-er). And many others I can’t think of right now…

 

[Byron]

Cichlid pronunciation. The translingual word cichlid comes from the family name Cichlidae, which derives from the Ancient Greek (1500 BC to 300 BC) word κίχλη (kíchlē). This word was the name of a marine fish, wrasse. The Cichlidae is the only freshwater fish family in the group of six families in the suborder Labroidei; the other families include the marine wrasses, damselfishes, surfperches, parrotfishes, and butterfish group.

In Greek, "ch" is always pronounced hard as the letter "k". While "c" here is soft. So, cichlid is pronounced sicklid, as others mention above.

 

[jaylach]

To be honest the only thing I unplug is my built in sponge filter as the inlet is near the top and the pump would drain the pump chamber possibly burning out the pump.. Heater is horizontal and low enough to be fine. My under gravel filtration is air driven so really does not matter.

 

[biofish]

I thought it was Chick-lid Well the more you know LOL

I typically leave my devices plugged in while doing water changes, and I’ve only regretted it once. One of my heaters broke- filled the whole room with burnt electrical smell.

I like to use dead fish as plant fertilizer. I plant them among my flowers.

I made the mistake of getting duckweed.

I used to not QT fish/not water drip accumulate and lost a lot of fish this way.

Forgetting to put a net over the opening of my python and barely stopped two fish from going down the drain (barely caught them, but I did. One actually went down the drain and I had him pined by his tail. Never again.)

Impulse Getting a fish that was small in the store and didn’t realize it’s adult form was WAYYYYY too big

 

[jaylach]

I like to use dead fish as plant fertilizer. I plant them among my flowers.

Don't know if still really in practice but in 'the old days' dead fish were used to quicken a tank's cycle especially in a marine tank. You would 'plant' dead feeder golds in the substrate to give the good bacteria something on which to feed.

 

[biofish]

Don't know if still really in practice but in 'the old days' dead fish were used to quicken a tank's cycle especially in a marine tank. You would 'plant' dead feeder golds in the substrate to give the good bacteria something on which to feed.

That’s… morbid. But I can see how it could help speed things up. Would never do it myself LOL

Whenever I set up a new tank, I put one of my biomedia in the new tank and give the old tank a new one LOL. Just the biomedia, the sponge stays in the old tank.

 

[jaylach]

That’s… morbid. But I can see how it could help speed things up. Would never do it myself LOL

Whenever I set up a new tank, I put one of my biomedia in the new tank and give the old tank a new one LOL. Just the biomedia, the sponge stays in the old tank.

Why is it morbid? I see no difference than in using a dead fish for plant fertilizer, the fish is already dead, why waste. Way back when a good store I used would actually pull dead feeder golds out of the tank and freeze for just this purpose. If you bought your tank from them they would even give you 'live' substrate to 'seed' the tank with bacteria.

 

[biofish]

Why is it morbid? I see no difference than in using a dead fish for plant fertilizer, the fish is already dead, why waste. Way back when a good store I used would actually pull dead feeder golds out of the tank and freeze for just this purpose. If you bought your tank from them they would even give you 'live' substrate to 'seed' the tank with bacteria.

OH. You GET the fish already dead! I thought you meant like buying an alive feeder fish and basically letting it die in the tank. I’ve never actually seen any fish store I’ve been to selling dead fish… I’ve never asked tho…

 

[jaylach]

OH. You GET the fish already dead! I thought you meant like buying an alive feeder fish and basically letting it die in the tank. I’ve never actually seen any fish store I’ve been to selling dead fish… I’ve never asked tho…

To be honest I'd imagine that a fish store today would be hard to find that offers such services. 40-50 years ago live fish stores were just different than those of today.

Anyway... sort of heading off topic.

 

[jaylach]

LOL! here is a BIG mistake that turned out OK. Way back in the 1980's when I got my first rope fish I didn't use air riser caps for my under gravel filtration. My rope fish disappeared and I could not find anywhere. They are escape artists and have lungs which allow them to live for several hours outside of the tank. Several times I would get home and pick the beastie off the floor and toss back in the tank but this time I could not find and figured that it got out and my dog got it.

At least 2 weeks later I saw the danged thing swimming up a filter air riser. The beast had gone down the riser and was living under the gravel. Ever since I've made sure to use slotted riser caps!

 

[Sgooosh]

How else would you pronounce Cichlid? That is how you say it.

You're in pretty good company on most of those mistakes. I dount the Betta killed a tankmate, but if one died, he would have joined in the scavenging if he was hungry.

I used to call them childs when I was little lol! I just saw the label thought it was actually "child".

 

[connorlindeman]

One of my biggest mistakes was thinking that this was ok.

Thats how my aquarium looked when I first joined the forum