If there was one piece of (silly or funny) advice you would give a new fishkeeper....

[Deleted member 149562]

....what would it be?

There will always be the standard advice given such as researching before buying and so forth. Fishkeeping can be a very serious pastime, especially when everything seems to be going wrong

But what piece of funny/silly advice would you give a new fishkeeper (or the occasional old one) that you have learnt in your (mis)adventures with fishkeeping?

Mine....well...never wear a white top when doing aquarium maintenance. I can wear any colour I want but the moment I have a white top on and start doing my weekly maintenance, Murphy (and his mischievious law) crawls out from under his rock and does something annoying....such as a filter can refusing to open, so I give it an extra shove whilst swearing at it, the can lid pops off suddenly and the contents go everywhere and my nice white top gets splattered with fish poo. Never happens with any other coloured top, only the white ones

So what silly things happen to you that makes you giggle (or swear) on a water change & maintenance day?

 

[xxBarneyxx]

Always keep some spare towels near the tank. The moment you don't, something will leak.

Nothing is ever just a 5 minute job.

If you ever have to catch all the fish in your tank it will mostly go pretty easy, except for that ONE fish which will take 6 times longer to catch than all the rest.

In addition to the above 1 net is good, 2 is better. If you can rope someone else in, 4 is even better than that. That ONE fish wont be any easier to catch but at least you will feel like you have a better chance at it.

1 small mixed sex group of any common live bearers will very soon become a very large group of live bearers.

When your hands are the most dirty while doing tank maintenance is when you will get a really bad itch on your nose.

At least 1 time out of every 10 you will not think about your hands being covered in fish poo and automatically scratch your nose anyway...

Don't use your mouth to start off a syphon. You are not quicker than the dirty tank water moving through the hose and you will get a mouthful.

Just like livebearers, fish tanks will multiple rapidly over time.

 

[Ch4rlie]

Agree with ALL of the above!

And definitely never a 5 minute job, amazing how one little job leads to another then to another and before you know you are arms deep into the tank doing a major job!

One extra little useful tip, get a clean sink plastic basin or large bucket and put the external or internal filter into this, THEN start disconnecting pipes or opening up the filter, saves getting water all over floor and saves mopping up spilled water which is pretty much guaranteed no matter how careful you are!!

Think these things have a life of their own and deliberately spill water when you’re not looking!

 

[itiwhetu]

Don't suck to hard on the siphon hose. You will end up drowning

 

[Ch4rlie]

Oh and get some of those, for disconnecting filter pipes, makes life a lot easier!

Double tap connector -

 

[Bruce Leyland-Jones]

The Rule of There's Always One

• You have six Black Neons, for example. Five will always be together, but there's always one that is playing Billy No-Mates, elsewhere...and it's never the same fish!
• You're siphoning your tank, or indulging in a water change. You're paying very close attention to the inlet, avoiding plants and fish and yet there's always one that will make for the inlet pipe, tighter than Luke Skywalker in a Death Star trench. Fortunately, you'll have your net to hand to retrieve the adventurous little fecker.
• When emptying your new fish, from bag to net or bucket or whatever, there's always one that'll steadfastly refuse to leave the bag...
• There's always one that'll attempt a leap to perceived freedom, in the opposite direction of the tank safety and under the ever-so watchful eyes of the local cat.
• A new one with shrimp...there's always one that'll try to convince you that it's quite happy admiring the view, whilst clinging tightly to the net.
• You think you have everything sussed out; the rules, the biochemistry, the physics, the biology, the ichthypsychology...and then there's always one thing that throws it all up into the air and proves that there is always an exception to the rule.

The Rule of the Wet Elbow

• Water and elbows are mutually attractive. Nuff said.

The Rule of OTINE

• One tank is never enough.

 

[Deleted member 149562]

The "one fish" that generally misbehaves or goes awol when trying to catch it .....

I can relate to that....one of my Danio's has a serious attitude and anger manangement problem....not to mention his perceived immortality issues

Come water changes, everyone else stays out the way except this one bolshy Danio.....he stands his ground, dives into the jug and flatly refuses to get out so I have to tip the jug back into the aquarium, he dives back in the jug...... "will you get away from the jug you stupid fish!" and "do you REALLY want to be flushed down the loo?" and "will you get out of the way!"......once the levels are down in the aquarium he stays close to the surface and splashes water all over the place (and me).....oh he is a nightmare. Once maintenance has been completed on his aquarium he sits there at the glass smirking at me then goes off on the zoomies for half an hour. He's always first in the food queue too.

Fish can be worse than toddlers in a kindergarten.

 

[Bruce Leyland-Jones]

Don't suck to hard on the siphon hose. You will end up drowning

Real Aquarists suck on tank water.

 

[Obsessed with fish]

1. If a fish dies remove it IMMEEDENTLY!

2. Just because you can put 10 fish in a 10 gallon, it does not mean you can have 1 in a 1 gallon.

3. 60% of the time the rule of thumb is wrong.

4. Don't take advice from petstores, because bet barn told me i can have a betta in a half gallon tank so they sold me it and a few weeks later i had to get a bigger 3 gallon. They ripped me off and i wasted $50.

5. Have a cover over your fish tank, trust me.

6. Vacuum the substrate, or you will regret it.

7. Instead of cycling your fish tank just use spring water and pour some pure ph in because then you dont have 2 wait 1 and a half months.

 

[Ch4rlie]

7. Instead of cycling your fish tank just use spring water and pour some pure ph in because then you dont have 2 wait 1 and a half months.

Sorry, but this is not accurate and saying not to cycle a tank properly is not giving good advice to our members and readers on this forum.

Please cycle your tank properly before adding any livestock, this is important.

You can have a read of this article, it will give you an idea why cycling a tank is important and how to proceed with cycling a tank.

Cycle Your Tank! A Complete Guide For Beginners

Fishless cycling https://www.fishforums.net/threads/cycling-your-new-fresh-water-tank-read-this-first.421488/ Silent or plant cycling https://www.fishforums.net/threads/planted-silent-cycling.470400/ Fish-in cycling...

www.fishforums.net

 

[Bruce Leyland-Jones]

Sorry, but this is not accurate and saying not to cycle a tank properly is not giving good advice to our members and readers on this forum.

Please cycle your tank properly before adding any livestock, this is important.

You can have a read of this article, it will give you an idea why cycling a tank is important and how to proceed with cycling a tank.

Cycle Your Tank! A Complete Guide For Beginners

Fishless cycling https://www.fishforums.net/threads/cycling-your-new-fresh-water-tank-read-this-first.421488/ Silent or plant cycling https://www.fishforums.net/threads/planted-silent-cycling.470400/ Fish-in cycling...

www.fishforums.net

With apologies to @wasmewasntit , it appears that neither @Ch4rlie or @Obsessed with fish possess a sense of humour.
What a shame.

 

[Bruce Leyland-Jones]

Don't suck to hard on the siphon hose. You will end up drowning

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Murphy's Law of Adhesives: Any adhesive will have a slightly stronger adhesion to your thumb than to whatever substance or object you're supposed to be gluing.

MLOA, Aquarist's Corollary 1: The above rule is doubly true if the adhesive in question is superglue/cyanoacrylate, and substance or object in question is Java Moss.

MLOA, Aquarist's Corollary 2: Java moss, superglue, and human skin combine, through a near-mystical process poorly understood by modern chemistry, to form a matrix that defies all efforts and methods of removal, be they manual picking, abrasive pads, pumice soap, or low-yield nuclear weapons. No matter how many little bits one picks off, there is always more. The U.S. Army is studying this matrix as a complement to kevlar body armor.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Murphy's Law of Adhesives: Any adhesive will have a slightly stronger adhesion to your thumb than to whatever substance or object you're supposed to be gluing.

MLOA, Aquarist's Corollary 1: The above rule is doubly true if the adhesive in question is superglue/cyanoacrylate, and substance or object in question is Java Moss.

MLOA, Aquarist's Corollary 2: Java moss, superglue, and human skin combine, through a near-mystical process poorly understood by modern chemistry, to form a matrix that defies all efforts and methods of removal, be they manual picking, abrasive pads, pumice soap, or low-yield nuclear weapons. No matter how many little bits one picks off, there is always more. The U.S. Army is studying this matrix as a complement to kevlar body armor.

MLOA, Aquarist's Corollary 3: The difficulty described in Corollary 2 is still less trouble than tying the stuff on with thread or fishing line.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

If you're planning to catch some fish from a tank, do it before you tidy up and maintain your planted tank, making it all look pretty. You will uproot and make a mess of the planting while trying to catch the sneaky little devil, and regret wasting all that time you spent tidying and replanting, since you have to start over again!

Some fish are easier to catch than others. Much as I love guppies, they're, um, not the brightest fish in the world. Super easy to catch! Just feed them, then scoop them from the surface with a net while they're distracted - half the time, they barely seem to even notice they've been caught

That boosts your confidence, makes you think you're pretty good at catching fish! Then you try that with platies, or mollies, and find out they're a tad smarter and have evasive maneuvers down pat. So you watch videos and read techniques for catching fish... but there's always that one! I know that one, I have a few of those ones!

Sometimes, you just have to give up and accept you've been outsmarted by a fish. You win this time, blue platy. You win. You've made it clear that you want to stay in that tank, okay!