Nastiest tank experience?????

BGJ223 · 06-01-2006, 10:27 AM

Ok so I have had a pretty funky morning so far. I get up this morning, walk into my living room and hear a weird sound in the tank. I turn on the room lights and I notice that my sea cucumber (Donkey Dung?) is in the power head. It is clogging up the intake, there is a hole in the center of the intake for water pass through. So I take off the intake thinking that the thing is dead and I can just toss everything and put on another pre-filter. Well I was super wrong. He was alive, and my guess pretty pissed off. So now I am stuck with the chore of getting the little bugger out. Of course the first attempt is to try and pull it out, but the fact that it was really in there and really shedding kinda stopped that plan. Ok tired of typing, so to make a long story short, I cut the pre-filter off of it and dropped it back in the tank. Not with out getting slimey gooey shedding stuff on me.

Now I know some of you have had some nastier experiences, but this one was pretty darn foul to me.

nobody · 06-01-2006, 10:32 AM

thats nasty, but yea thats why i was told not to buy one..............they are really cool until their dumb self gets sucked into a powerhead ............i heard this story about these animals more then i can remember

skeety · 06-01-2006, 10:33 AM

nice! hahaha

that'll wake you up WAY more than any amount of coffee would! hehehe

sorry you had to start your day out like THAT!

Booboo33062 · 06-01-2006, 10:48 AM

Mine did that once and went down the overflow twice, I put him back in the tank each time. I haven't seen him now for about 2 weeks. I don't know what happened to him. I guess he is gone.

BGJ223 · 06-01-2006, 11:43 AM

It came with the package that I got from TBSaltwater.com, so it wasn't really my choice. I think when I get home I will pull it out and take it to my LFS. They just look kinda nasty.

jenajet · 06-01-2006, 02:27 PM

I havn't had any bad experiences with my saltwater. My freshwater oh yeah. Got up one morning and the tank was white and everything was dead. So I'm cleaning and ranting get all the water out and I find whats left a what had to be a hole bag of jellybeans. My daughter who was two at the time decided to feed the fish. Well thats one of the reasons I waited to get the saltwater. She's 7 now and my kids now know the tanks are off limits. Still get fingerprints they love to look but they know not to put anything in the tanks. Once explaining that feeding them anything but fish food kills them she doesnt try.

Cylenchar · 06-01-2006, 02:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jenajet

I havn't had any bad experiences with my saltwater. My freshwater oh yeah. Got up one morning and the tank was white and everything was dead. So I'm cleaning and ranting get all the water out and I find whats left a what had to be a hole bag of jellybeans. My daughter who was two at the time decided to feed the fish. Well thats one of the reasons I waited to get the saltwater. She's 7 now and my kids now know the tanks are off limits. Still get fingerprints they love to look but they know not to put anything in the tanks. Once explaining that feeding them anything but fish food kills them she doesnt try.

Ouch... I can see a kid doing that..... someone else on the forum had there young son put a pound of frozen food in the saltwater tank.....

jenajet · 06-01-2006, 03:05 PM

Has to be better than jellybeans.

JennM · 06-01-2006, 03:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cylenchar

Ouch... I can see a kid doing that..... someone else on the forum had there young son put a pound of frozen food in the saltwater tank.....

We had a client's "tank sitter" (cough) do that. The client left instructions: 1/2 cube of frozen food every other day. Well the sitter didn't find the cubed food, she only found a whole 8-oz pack of frozen Mysis in the freezer. She put half in on Monday, the other half on Wednesday. Thursday morning she called me asking why the water looked cloudy.

I was actually out of state, but I called Scott - he dropped everything and ran up to the client's with 30 gallons of water for an emergency water change (120-gallon tank) and a canister filter loaded with carbon, phosphate sponge, and polyfilter. He literally vacuumed up most of the pack of uneaten (rotting) food. The tank did have a minor ammonia spike but no livestock losses.

Some people just have no common sense. Needless to say that individual was never left in charge of the tank again.

Jenn

jenajet · 06-01-2006, 03:10 PM

Good Save! What did the client say? Hope they found new sitter.

JennM · 06-01-2006, 03:18 PM

The client was happy to pay our emergency service fee

I had originally suggested she bag individual food portions ahead of time but she didn't take the time to do that... just left a note saying "half a cube every other day"... it never dawned on her that her sitter wouldn't realize that half a block of Mysis was too much.

Unfortunately I've seen this sort of thing happen too often. The best prevention is to portion out the servings, either in baggies, or in a 7-day pill box (leave a box empty if you skip a day of feedings), that way they can't "over feed" by accident.

I've heard horror stories of kids giving fish a "bath" (putting soap in a tank), or kids feeding a whole jar of flakes at once... usually it's accidental kid-stuff, but sometimes otherwise conscientious and responsible adults who just don't have a clue, cause the disasters.

We've heard and seen it all - floods, tank failures (blown seams, cracks), power failures, you name it.

Jenn

BGJ223 · 06-01-2006, 03:21 PM

Well I have seen first hand what happens when kids get around tank. My brothers fresh water tank that had fish that were 4+ years old was wiped out by a can of pellets. All the adults were outside, and the kids were playing video games. Well I guess they were doing a little more than that.

pastina · 06-01-2006, 07:57 PM

i had 2 nasty tank experiences...but not exactly with the inhabitants...
ya know how you suck one end of the siphon to get it going??? well i sucked up my turtles water that way, but only i misjudged when to stop, so i had a yummy mouthful of turtle juice

you think id learn right?? wrong i did it again, this time on my reef tank, i sucked up a mouthfull of reef tank water

its a miracle im still alive...i did kinda feel smarter after tho, must have been the zoa

i have since then learned, dont suck the other end of a siphon

i let the pump do it....i got zoa smarts now

jdbassin · 06-01-2006, 08:25 PM

careful if it's sliming, Cuke can be poisonous when injured and or dying, They've cause many a full tank crash

jd