What were your biggest purchase mistakes?

[Bblinks]

Originally Posted by kien

I purchased a 150g tank a couple of years go. Now I'm out thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars! What a money pit!

Hahahahah, that's awesome, I started with a free 20 gallon and upgraded to a free 55 gallon tank. 6 years and 20k plus later. What kind of hobby is this? But if I had a choice I would probably do it all over again. Any one looking to purchase a kidney? I want a bubble king 250.

Serious note. 3 x 400 w is way too much for a 210, 250 is plenty enough.
Bigger is not always better. Coralife power bar, I am on the third one in less then a year. Free if anyone interested. Hydor 1000 skimmer. Try to take the cup off is like pulling teeth. Aqua doser is 50/50 works decent but could be a lot better. Zeovit, good product but absolutely not a necessity. All ki d of magic potions. The things we go through to try to grow some coral.

[zum14]

Originally Posted by Bblinks

Serious note. 3 x 400 w is way too much for a 210, 250 is plenty enough.
Bigger is not always better.

Ya I bought 3 X 400w on a good deal, they were nice but im not sure how I convinced myself my power bill wouldnt go through the roof. There currently stored in the basement away from any plugin. Just to be safe.

[BlueTang<3]

Worst thing i bought were the finnex titanium heater and asm skimmer.

[lastlight]

Tunze 9002. I fell for the hype and failed.

[Ryan]

Originally Posted by lastlight

Tunze 9002. I fell for the hype and failed.

Really? I love mine. I have it on a 35g frag tank with only 5 small fish but it keeps the tank clean. I dont think I would want to run it on anything more heavily stocked than that.

[lastlight]

In my Solana I could never really get it to do much besides make noise.

[globaldesigns]

Tunze 9010 - couldn't get it to pull any skimmate.

[Samw]

Originally Posted by lastlight

Tunze 9002. I fell for the hype and failed.

+1 on the skimmer.

Another mistake that I can think of right now are buying Acroporas when my water quality was poor. Wasted most of my livestock money on those by far.

Also wasted money on various MH single bulb setups and pendants when in the end, the dual 150w HQI was the better choice for my system at the time.

[globaldesigns]

HMMMM, sometimes I think my whole setup!

[DiverDude]

For me it was buying a 28 Gal tank (with no sump and an HA problem). The rationale at the time was that it was small enough that if I totally screwed up, I couldn't kill as much as with a larger tank. While I've learned a lot from this tank, the biggest lesson was that 90 Gal -IMO- is the smallest tank a noob should get.