Fishkeeping mistakes I made

[Deleted member 149562]

Everyone in fishkeeping makes mistakes regardless of whether you are a beginner just starting out or a time served old fogey....everyone makes errors of judgement and mistakes, its how we learn (and that goes with every single aspect in life)

The biggest issue (again as with everything in life) are your fellow humans. They will queue up to be judgemental and pick apart your every single move and idea.

The fish, on the other hand, are generally far more understanding and forgiving of most mistakes.......at the end of the day, your aquarium might look like an untidy teenagers bedroom and might be filled with artificial everything, but as long as the health and welfare of your fish is not being harmed by it all, then what you do with your own aquarium is entirely your own business and no-one elses.

You never ever stop learning, there is always something new or unusual around the next corner.......an open mind, a (very, very) deep bank account, buckets full of patience and the desire to learn (and the ability to sift the judgemental from the actual advice) is all that is required

40+ years ago you could fill an aquarium straight from the tap and plop the fish into it...the "indoor pond" approach.

Nowadays its a degree in chemistry, mathmatics and you apparently need to be a budding Picasso combined with Percy Thrower (Google old Percy...old school gardener) to be a successful fishkeeper. Or, at least, that is how many would have you think.

 

[Ichthys]

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

Thats how my aquarium looked when I first joined the forum

My first tropical tank looked very similar, although it was a lot smaller. The unscrupulous money-grabbing local shop sold me a 3” Pangasius and a 3” Tinfoil Barb, for an 18” already overstocked tank. To be fair the tinfoil tried to help me out by reducing the number of smaller fish.
Before I went tropical I had, in the same 18”x10”x10” tank, at the recommendation of the same shop, the following stock list…
2x 3” goldfish
2x 3” shubunkins
1x 2” black moor
1x 3” red fantail
1x 2” red cap oranda
2x 3” golden rudd
2x 3” golden orfe
2x 2” bitterling
1x 4” weather loach (dojo loach)
1x 3” black bullhead cat.
Needless to say it was a disaster that didn’t wait long to happen.

Every goldfish tank in the 70s had a black bullhead, just like every Oscar tank had a plec (Hypostomus) and a Synodontis nigrita.

Ictalurus/Ameiurus are illegal now in the UK because they’d survive the winter. Nostalgia is a huge thing for me these days, and I’d dearly love to keep one again. A black or a brown.

 

[emeraldking]

Everyone in fishkeeping makes mistakes regardless of whether you are a beginner just starting out or a time served old fogey....everyone makes errors of judgement and mistakes, its how we learn (and that goes with every single aspect in life)

Exactly! I'm not any different...

 

[Glenn407]

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

I think I'm guilty of throwing an H in there myself. I think maybe not looking at the spelling close enough does it coupled with the fact that there seems to be more words that begin with ch.

 

[GaryE]

We all make mistakes. I still do after 50+ years of fishkeeping.

I think the biggest mistake is asking a question and expecting confirmation of what you want to do. You see people ignoring grounded advice, and you wonder why they'd ask if they had one answer in mind that they were going to act on anyway. That's not just a fishkeeping error, but one that affects everything. Still, we see it here a lot.

it's a little hard being a fish when we don't do basic maintenance or overfeed (or make a million other mistakes). They have to take the hit while we learn. So learning from mistakes matters a lot.

As a guy in our club once said, it takes a while to get the hang of chiclet aggression.

Pronunciation doesn't affect our fish....

 

[VioletThePurple]

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

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

I thought Chicklid was the correct pronunciation.

 

[VioletThePurple]

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

Thats how my aquarium looked when I first joined the forum

At least it's clean.

 

[Playsander]

Not teaching my wife and kids how to look after the tank or what to do in an emergency.

I was working late one night and when I got home heard a disturbing bubbling sound. The aqua stone had come off the end of my co2 injection system and was happily bubbling away. I lost half my fish to co2 poisoning. My wife said she thought it was a new bubble feature I had bought.

I ditched the system after that and proceeded to educate the family.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

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.

Same. I have heaters and as many filter intake below the 50% line so I don't need to worry about turning things off then back on again during water changes.

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.

*Raises hand* I'm a relatively new-school British keeper, and have a small Marina HOB filter! I don't love it though, I admit. It clogs and slows easily, is one of those I need to turn off and on again during water changes, and I run a secondary filter on the same tank since I don't trust the HOB alone. It's more like a backup in case one fails, and the other filter is spare that can be switched to a hospital or QT tank when needed.

I would like to try a Fluval or other brand more powerful HOB though, just to compare.

 

[Ichthys]

@AdoraBelle Dearheart (one of my favourite ever usernames). Whereabouts are you? Does a local shop sell them?

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

@AdoraBelle Dearheart (one of my favourite ever usernames). Whereabouts are you? Does a local shop sell them?

Ty for the username compliment! Are you a Sir Terry fan also?

I'm in Bristol. Not sure if any of the LFS sell them, we don't have many privately owned ones left, sadly. The one I used most closed down last year, just couldn't compete with Amazon/Maidenhead/Pets at Home *spits*

I bought my tanks second hand, so the HOB came to me used with one of those, so I'm afraid I don't know where they got it. Amazon still sells HOBs though.

 

[Deleted member 149562]

Ty for the username compliment! Are you a Sir Terry fan also?

I'm in Bristol. Not sure if any of the LFS sell them, we don't have many privately owned ones left, sadly. The one I used most closed down last year, just couldn't compete with Amazon/Maidenhead/Pets at Home *spits*

I bought my tanks second hand, so the HOB came to me used with one of those, so I'm afraid I don't know where they got it. Amazon still sells HOBs though.

ProShrimp sell HOB's and their media....Seachem Tidal and Superfish types (they are listed with the externals)

External & Hang-on Back HOB Filters - Pro Shrimp

External Filters for all sizes as well as Hang On (HOB) filters

www.pro-shrimp.co.uk

 

[Ichthys]

Ty for the username compliment! Are you a Sir Terry fan also?

Actually I’m not really, and I’ve just googled it. I thought it was an original name of yours. I actually assumed you meant Terry Wogan till I googled it. Lol.

Much more of a Julian May fan.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

Actually I’m not really, and I’ve just googled it. I thought it was an original name of yours. I actually assumed you meant Terry Wogan till I googled it. Lol.

Much more of a Julian May fan.

Sadly, I'm not terribly original! But a big fan of Sir Terry Pratchett.

Man, I loved and miss Terry Wogan too, dad listened to him every morning. I don't know who Julian May is!

 

[sharkweek178]

I just started a heavily planted tank. Since I was starting the tank and all the new fish were coming from the same store, I figured that I could just use the new tank as the quarantine tank. Problem is that the plants and all the other hiding places make it harder to observe the fish. So for my new fish now, I'm setting up a dedicated quarantine tank that will be much simpler in the set up. The fish will still have places to hide. But not as many and I'll be able to remove the hides. That's also so that when the time comes to move them to the main tank, I'll be able to net them easier.