One of those days.....Lesson No. 1 in fishkeeping

[mickvick]

I came home yesterday to find my entire colony of Frontosa dead, along with miscellaneous others.  I'd grown these guys up for 2.5 years, they were the pick of 20 juveniles, from 4 different bloodlines, and I was just getting the first mouthfulls.

Turns out I had a sump pump failure.  Unfortunately, the outlet of the secondary filter, a fluval cannister, fell off its suction cup and didnt break the surface of the water, so the poor fellas ran out of oxygen.  Didn't help that it was the hottest day of the year either.

This is where lesson number 1 starts, cheap equipment is very rarely cheap.  You may pay less at the start, but it will always cost you more in the long run.  In my case, a lot more.

I won't name the brand of pump it was (chinese eheim copy)... it was only 1.5 years old....needless to say I won't buy one again.

I hope that others can learn from my unfortunate loss.

Michael

[moses]

Dude that sucks. Very sorry for your losses. My 7 bar colony is only 4 months old, it would be bad enough losing them. But 2.5 years :(
Hopefully my FX5 doesn't crap itself in the near future...

[neyund]

Mate,
  sorry to hear about your lost.  Similar thing happened to me about a year ago and I went out and bought a UPS. The other night, the old fridge kicked the bucket and caused the whole power circuit to switch off.  The UPS kicked in and I only found out in the morning.  All the fish survived.  The UPS cost me $350 and that saved my colonies of 6-bar fronties and 7-bar fronties and another 8 other breeding colonies.  I reckon the $350 investment was the best thing I ever did.  I just hope that this summer, we don't encounter those long 24 hour power outage from storm damage like we did a few years ago.

Keep your chin up mate.

Cheers,
dan

[fishlover]

oh far out that is so bad to here. sorry for your loss. it makes me want to go and get some proper more expensive stuff thanks.

[Rod54]

Sorry to hear Micheal....

What an absolute tragedy!

Have to be the worst day this year for a failure!

Might put an airstone in all my tanks tonight....

[DFishKeeper]

Hi Mick,

That's a damn shame, mate  :cry:

I've learnt that lesson the hard way myself in the past also. Nowadays I much prefer to spend a little more & get good quality equipment, its better value in the long term. As Dan says, keep your chin up and learn from the experience.

Cheers, Doug

[braddo]

Yeah a hard lesson to learn but one we have all been through. Don't worry a lot of us has saved money to start and cost us more than we bargained for.

[mudskipper]

real sorry to hear about that mate,

that was real nasty.

cheers lloyd

[raycam01_au]

Sorry to hear it dude, i also came home yesterday and a canister filter had failed in my display tank, lost 11 lemon breast cyps, and a couple of comps :(   not happy, bloody hot day also didnt make it easy!
Back up filter thankfully kept every other fish just alive.
Ray

[fishtraderlau]

Oh Mick,

My first night back on the forum here since August and to read this, Lloyd told me about it the other day.

What can i say champ, it does happen to the very best of us like you have seen from the replies of others as well- rest assured i have lost my fair share of fish in the past but looking forward mate, that fish room of yours is a good setup that you've put a lot of effort into so all i can say champ is definately get an airloop running in there as well with air stones in every tank, it's a must that i have in all of my tanks as well as having them sumped and what ever else filtration i have on.

Such bad luck mate, i am sure that i can help you out in the future with some nice donated fish for the tank if you want mate.

I'll catch you in the new year, probably at the feb auction hey.

Good luck with it all Mick,

Andrew.

[BrightSpark]

eeeeekk,  i am only new to the fish game,  but i get upset even loosing one,  to loose so many would devestate me.

We are going on a two week holiday soon,  now i am going to spend time stressing about the tanks. arrghhg