Looking back......
 

I been looking back and thinking how much I have had paid for some of the corals and frags when I didn't know any better.
OMG is all I can say.
Green star polyps $20 for a 2"X2" frag
Common green zoas(not florescent ones) $15 for may be 10 polyps.
Halameda algae ,yep I paid 5 backs for it believe it or not.
One Purple mushroom I got for $19 at the store.
Anthelia frag(small) $20, because I been told it's uncommon coral and I liked a look of it at the time.

What was your "screw up" experience when you started reefing?

LOL, I bought a rock with about 12 "rare red Tonga mushrooms" on it from a store in Victoria for $90. They melted off the rock within a couple of days and I had a lovely paperweight.

I also did the buy one get one free fish from petcetera, "wow if I buy two I get two free". Yeah, putting four fish at once into a 20 gal....not so smrt. After that my next purchase was The Conscientious Marine Aquarist by Fenner and I had some reading to do :neutral:

Just about every sps I've ever bought lol but u remember the girlfriend bought me a coral for my birthday she didn't know any better so she spent 200 on a huge merulina sp. Well to say the least it was soccer ball sized and sweepers just as long I tried to keep ut but my bug tanks weren't healthy enough and my small one was too small. I ended up breaking off chunks and giving as much away as I could:)

I think my screwup was starting a tank in the first place, my mortgage would be paid off by now.

$20 for a single head of frogspawn was probably the worse one for me. However any of the acropora under 1" and over $20 that I've purchased also strike me as a rip off.

I had several screw ups:

1. Buying the cute little Sailfin Tang for my 90g tank. A year later I had to buy a
225g to house him. :redface:

2. A fist-sized piece of rock covered with mushrooms and/or palythoas for $10
each. Of course I bought both of them and have been trying to get rid of
them ever since. :cry:

3. Me: "Why is your RBTA brown?" LFS: "Oh, it is a Rose BTA. It just hasn't
coloured up yet."

This is great, keep it coming. I am learning something already, it may help out someone starting out.

O, yes I forgot about a head of frogspawn but I paid $30 at the store(no names), got it home two days later had only skeleton left.

Hmmm. I'll just attach my first tank thread to this later. Epic failure. Main moral from that one, I don't need 3 400w lights for a tank with 4 sps in it and thinking my power bill wouldn't be that bad with the lights and 1200w of heaters trying to keep 300 gal of tank water warm and 200 gal of misc other water warm in my basement. I could go on but I feel stupid enough for now so that is all.

+1 I don't even want to think about how much $ I have actually spent in this hobby.

A small frag of brown zoas (I think it was about $10) fairly cheep but ugly as hell, spreads like weeds, can be rather toxic to touch if you're not careful and no matter what you do they will not die!