Your dumbest reef related move? Here's mine....

[gregzz4]

If you want nearly flood proof, you could copy my setup. There is a float valve, but I still turn off the feed when the drum is full.

[dwerbs87]

I had my ro/di line run to my tank with just a ball valve I would turn on and then turn off after about 30 mins. I knew it was dumb, my wife told me it was dumb when I had a bit of a spill. I kept telling myself I would set up a proper float I just didn't really have space for it in our apartment. Xmas eve I see it is a little low so I turn it on and then start loading the car with gifts we are bringing out to my moms. Everything is all loaded, lock the door and leave. Xmas morning we are opening presents and I get a phone call from the building manager saying that there was water leaking down last night and they had to go into my apartment. So the whole main area of our place was wrecked, flooring, baseboards etc. The ceiling of the apartment below me was soggy and leaking through their light fixtures. And the main floor apartment had their breaker box explode after water got into it. I ended up selling my tank because all of the floor needed to be replaced and I didn't have the resources or drive to move the tank to replace the floors then move it back, and was out of the hobby for 2 years.
Now we are in our new house and I have the top off pump up from tanks in the basement, being controlled by 2 float switches connected to the apex, a solenoid valve in the line, PLUS a float valve in the tank in case the first two lines of defense fail.

[makana]

I dropped my diy light fixture into the tank and went in after it. The only thing that died was the bulbs. Still not sure how I escaped without being shocked.

[marie]

My dumbest move? Introducing Ich to my display after being ich free for 6 yrs

[NorthernCoral]

Moved my tank a couple of weeks ago, had most of my corals, inverts and a tomatoe clown in a bucket overnight. Put a new heater in the bucket and turned what I what I thought was the temperature dial to 79. Checked the bucket just before bed and everything seemed fine. Awoke in the morning to an awful stench and to find out that what I thought was the temp adjust dial on the heater was actually for calibration. Was too devastated too take pics...However after seeing fishytimes nightmare my problems dont seem too bad.

[Casey8]

Moving to another house, I was putting all the fish from a 250 gallon tank to a 90 gallon tank. Left the old house that night and brought the big tank with me into the new house, got it ready so I could transfer the fish back. The next morning when I got back to the old house to get the fish, they were all dead because the thermometer kept running up to 42C didn't stop. I was devastated looking at their dead bodies floating or sinking around at the bottom of the tank and I just coudn't even cry.

[asylumdown]

Went out of town for 5 days. Normally, my auto-top off container was a 2 gallon pale in the cabinet under my 90 gallon, but it could hold a max of 4 days of worth of water, so I filled my 20 gallon water change rubbermaid and put the top off pump in it. I didn't move the output of the osmolator pump though, which was clipped to the side of my sump in the cabinet. What I didn't realize was that having 10 times the normal amount of water above the pump in the rubber-maid combined with the extra height the hose gained going up and over the top of the bin was enough to start a siphon the first time the osmolator pump kicked in. It emptied about 15 gallons of top up water in to the sump on the first day we were gone, and since it was only 5 days, I didn't have anyone coming to check on the tank.

Thankfully nothing died, but it overflowed the sump, filled the cabinet with salt water, and spread out across our finished concrete floors. By the time we got home, it had mostly dried so there was a huge salted patch that had eaten through the finish of the floor. The argument that started nearly spelled the end of that tank.

[Maverick00]

Originally Posted by Coralgurl

Since I bought my ro unit, I have flooded my kitchen at least 5 times, water pouring into my daughters room in the basement each time...she comes running up yelling what the he'll is my problem.....another reefer suggested I put the jugs in a rubbermaid just in case. Start doing that, then start using same rubber made for water changes....set the timer but still get the floods....moved ro to basement, hopefully that's the end of the flooding...as soon as we get the float valve installed....

Im not sure what size jugs your using, but I throw my 5gal's right into the kitchen sink so overflow is impossible except into the drain.

Havent come across any major problems yet other than some sps stn, bubble algae im too lazy to manually pick out, and the idea i can keep more than one chromis in a 33gal tank at once

[asylumdown]

oh, and probably even worse - after i set up my very first salt water tank for the very first time, I looked at one of the pieces of live rock near the sand and said "OH WOW! There's like these cool little anemones starting to grow! So awesome!!!"

The correct response should have been to have taken that rock out, locked it in a shed, then set the shed on fire.

Yesterday, went to safeway and bought a bunch of frozen stuff. Took the bag of fish food out and set it aside. Forgot to put back in. There goes $80. I'll never stock pile frozen food again.