# Official DIY disaster thread - post your blunders!! (lots of pics)



## Baadboy11 (Oct 28, 2009)

I kinda like your second idea would make adding fertz super easy.

My fail would have to be my DIY canister filter...worked ok eventually but for the same price an Eheim would have worked better.


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## happi (Dec 18, 2009)

should have used PVC pipe for your 2nd method, metal is always risky.


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## wastedtime (Oct 27, 2011)

After looking at the DIY stands thread here ... tried building a stand for myself for a tiny 10 Gallon, i ran to home depot all exited and grabbed everything i would need, built a crappy looking stand and called it a day. For the amount I spent building it, I could have just purchased one. Lesson learnt, building a stand isnt easy, requires planning, tools and most importantly SKILL. :frown:


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## scapegoat (Jun 3, 2010)

wastedtime said:


> After looking at the DIY stands thread here ... tried building a stand for myself for a tiny 10 Gallon, i ran to home depot all exited and grabbed everything i would need, built a crappy looking stand and called it a day. For the amount I spent building it, I could have just purchased one. Lesson learnt, building a stand isnt easy, requires planning, tools and most importantly SKILL. :frown:


and you get that skill from screwing up and learning. if you did something perfectly the first time, you'd have learnt nothing.


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## Hoppy (Dec 24, 2005)

As I recall all of my DIY threads here have been posted as I build, so I note any failures as I go along, plus what I try to do to fix them. But, my biggest "failures" were my tries at new methods to support light fixtures above the tank. So far none of them did everything I wanted very well, with the possible exception of the last one, made with a pair of drawer slides. The biggest failure was with a cantilevered parallelogram linkage with springs to counterbalance the weight of the fixture. The darned thing tended to twist to the side very rapidly, scaring me so much I removed the springs. Usually I keep trying until I make things work, but that hasn't always been the case.


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## wastedtime (Oct 27, 2011)

scapegoat said:


> and you get that skill from screwing up and learning. if you did something perfectly the first time, you'd have learnt nothing.


I agree, I definitely learnt from it. 
1. I should have planned it better.
2. The right tools save you tons of time and effort.
3. Patience is key. A good stand is not built in a matter of hours. 

Hopefully my second attempt draws from my first screwup.


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## fauxjargon (Oct 23, 2010)

happi said:


> should have used PVC pipe for your 2nd method, metal is always risky.


300 and 400 series SS are considered food safe. However I understand the motivation because I've killed a tiger barb the same way as the OP...


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## talontsiawd (Oct 19, 2008)

All my DIY's have been successful thus far but that doesn't mean I haven't had my blunders. When I got my first canister filter, I didn't really understand how they worked. Mine was very noisy so I thought I could try to manually purge the air out by opening the top (while still connected to the tank). I didn't realize they were fed by a siphon to begin with. I really didn't understand how hard it would be to get the top back on. 

I didn't drain my tank like the picture but I did dump at least 5 gallons or more on the floor. I ended up having to tear down my tank to get the carpet up, etc.

By far my biggest blunder to date.


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## galabar (Oct 19, 2011)

Broken siphon in an overflow box, on multiple occasions. :iamwithst I will never use a siphon overflow again (drill baby, drill!  ).


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## GeToChKn (Apr 15, 2011)

Mostly it's just me doing WC's and I just stick a hose in my tank, suck and drain into a 5gal jug but sometimes either watching what I'm sucking up in the tank or talking and then my feet get wet. Normally just half a gallon or something.


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## sick lid (Jan 13, 2008)

GeToChKn said:


> Mostly it's just me doing WC's and I just stick a hose in my tank, suck and drain into a 5gal jug but sometimes either watching what I'm sucking up in the tank or talking and then my feet get wet. Normally just half a gallon or something.


I've always been amazed at how much more water it seems once it's on the floor, lol! 'Just' only applies before it's on the hardwood, :hihi:


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## Naekuh (Oct 19, 2011)

GeToChKn said:


> Mostly it's just me doing WC's and I just stick a hose in my tank, suck and drain into a 5gal jug but sometimes either watching what I'm sucking up in the tank or talking and then my feet get wet. Normally just half a gallon or something.


ahahahhaha... my tank is right behind a window which gets almost 0 light thoughtout the day.

so i just stick a tube out the window... and let the water dump to my backyard... 

i bet the grass loves that... i noticed its been growing really well on that part of the grass...


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## ucantimagine (Jan 8, 2012)

giggling at the thread title. May I contribute my "Mineralized Top Soil capped with large gravel=ammonia explosion" debacle? lol Not exactly DIY, but not quite off-the-shelf either.


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## sns26 (Mar 29, 2010)

I plumbed hot & cold water supply lines into my system so I could do water changes and topoffs really easily. It works just great. But two weeks ago my downstairs tenant called me up at work to say "there's a steady stream of water coming down into the basement." You got it: I left one of the faucet valves open juuust enough to drip-drip-drip water into the tank. Eventually it overflowed and made a big old mess. I care enough about my stand that I had to take everything apart to dry it all off and put a fan in the cabinet for a week to make sure I wouldn't warp anything.


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## fozwald (Nov 19, 2010)

The family and were getting ready to go out for lunch, and I thought I would go ahead and get the water ready for a pwc. So I filled one bucket no prob, but i started the next one (that sat on the tub drain), put the kids in the car and left. 20 min past before i realized I left the water on. Got home the tub was over flowing, but not as bad as i was thinking (still bad thou). Some of the water was able to drain under the bucket, so that saved my floor. btw this happend about 4 days ago. and i still did the water change.


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## Redneck Badger (Jan 13, 2012)

Naekuh said:


> ahahahhaha... my tank is right behind a window which gets almost 0 light thoughtout the day.
> 
> so i just stick a tube out the window... and let the water dump to my backyard...
> 
> i bet the grass loves that... i noticed its been growing really well on that part of the grass...


I do that too!lol. I put the hose into my tank and put the other end out the window, watching very carefully not to spout out any of my wee fishes or shrimp! Thing is, Im 5 floors up an neighbours below must be wonderin what the heck Im doin,lol.


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## CrazyMidwesterner (Oct 19, 2006)

Here's my latest 

http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/fertilizers-water-parameters/157288-diy-root-tabs.html

A cloudy tank for two weeks and a complete gravel vac and replanting was necessary to fix it. * Note * don't use crayola air dry clay for DIY root tabs


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## sketch804 (Mar 2, 2011)

Think my worst one was just doing water changes, So not really DIY, but bad none the less (I don't do many DIY except build stands)..Soo anyway, I used a water pump/powerhead attached to my hose to take water out of my bigger tank faster because I had discus (at the time, none now  ) because I needed to remove 80% of the water, and it was rolling on out at a nice flow. Then I had an "urge", so I turned the pump off thinking it would kill the siphon action, and went to sit on the toilet. Next thing, I am sitting there listening to water falling wondering, what is that? I turned my filter off, why am I hearing this noise right now? so finished as fast as I could, went back in my room and had dumped I don't know how many gallons on my floor. ended up using EVERY single towel in the house to clean up all the water! I was lucky because it didn't ruin the carpet like I thought it would have haha! :confused1:


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## DogFish (Jul 16, 2011)

In the category of Aquarium DIY blunders, opening up an acrylic aquarium, thinking a Euro-Rim would work:

http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/general-planted-tank-discussion/150325-o-k-so-wasnt-good-idea.html

Anybody can throw $$$ at a hobby, it takes a special kind of genius to create an Epic Fail.

:hihi:


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## Jason Baliban (Mar 3, 2005)

proaudio55 said:


> **AFTER** I was done, I researched the product specs. The total light output: 136 lumens. (about as much as a 3w CFL) Idiot!


HAHAHAHA!!

This one is amazing! We have all been there

jB


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## Taari (Jul 31, 2010)

Maybe I'm lucky, but so far none of my DIY projects have been *complete* failures. Some of them don't end up exactly like I want them to, but they've never been a total loss. I DIY'd my lighting over my 40 breeder. Now I'm going to DIY a new fixture because I've decided the first one I did is too heavy and hard to adjust, and is ineffective.

However, if I ever get my custom 5.5g tank built and setup with the drain and sump system I have planned, there's all kinds of room for failure in that project, so maybe I'll have something more impressive to post later.


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## dindin (Mar 4, 2009)

My tank is also by a window. I can't believe hubby suggested that we just cut a small hole in the screen and Hose the water out. Now we've gotten even braver and we use the outdoor hose to also refill. He stands outside waiting for my signal, and I run water into the 125. Only thing is we have a special coating on the windows... No it hasn't happened yet but I keep thinking what happens I'd hhe can't see me wave? Lol


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## kurosuto (May 20, 2009)

lol while doing WC one day when i was in junior HS, i left the hose running(feeding water into the tank), went to play some diablo II or counter strike and after awhile, i felt water in my feet when i was located 2-3 rooms away and yeah...flooded my entire house. Got evicted and a long speech from parents...


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## VW_Factor (Jan 24, 2012)

We use a small strip of that style of LEDs glued to the inside lid of a 2 gallon cylinder tank. Grows plants and keeps the snails happy. Its a quarantine tank though. 

You can get those strips from some suppliers like 50ft of them for pretty cheap. I'd bet with enough of the white ones, you could get enough light in a hood.


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## sewingalot (Oct 12, 2008)

Fun topic!



proaudio55 said:


> It seems every tank is immaculate without a speck of algae . . .


It appears you don't look at my works of algae art. :wink:

DIY canopy attempt #1: Basically made a small coffin, paint was splotchy, and worst thing? It was 1/4" too small. It is now sitting downstairs in the pile of scrap wood.










Second attempt, the doors are a little crooked and you can see light shining out:









DIY medication:
Killed over 40 fish trying to treat for ich. Not happy.

DIY Cerges reactor:
Didn't realize how powerful it was and didn't turn down the co2 far enough, woke on the second day to almost the entire tank poisioned from excess co2.

DIY co2:
Over charged yeast, poisioned all my cory fish.

DIY filter modification:
Decided to drill out the Tom's Rapid Canister like suggested on a DIY found on this site. It leaked slowly and ended up draining a few gallons of water on the floor before I saw it.

DIY mineralized soil #1:
Neighbor's cat peed on it several times. Smell never went away. 

Attempt #2:
Went well, but then decided to uproot the sword in the tank by yanking it out quickly and ended up with this:









DIY emersed setup:
First attempt, I put in old dirt that had sat outside for a while. When I checked on the progress a short time later, there was 100s of fungus gnats and larvae swarming the tub. Had to start over.

DIY Hamburger Mattenfilter:
Cut the filter crooked and it didn't fit in space, kept popping out. Had to modify with a small piece of foam:









I could go on, but these are the more memorable ones. Those that have perfect tanks are either lying or really boring to look at after a while. I find the unexpected to be part of the territory and sometimes entertaining.


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## proaudio55 (Oct 20, 2011)

*Latest "FAIL"*

This was my first attempt at building any kind of hardscaping. This project ended in absolute failure. ++sigh++

I have a sand bottom and I've not been able to do any 'scaping other than flat.  So I figured I would try to make a terrace sort of thing to give a multi-level bottom . . . and this would provide a way to keep my vallisneria from spreading EVERYWHERE.

So was born this project. As I was laying this out I though, geee, maybe I could do a dark castle sort of thing... and I tried going in that direction. As I was building this, it just got progressively worse looking. Half way through the outside rocking, I just gave up because it was awful and totally unusable.

Construction: 1/4" thick PVC flat sheet and the turrets are 6" PVC drain pipe.
Status: I salvaged the black rocks off it and threw the PVC away.









http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/pHosting.php?do=show&type=f&id=10687&title=fail3c.jpg









http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/pHosting.php?do=show&type=f&id=10686&title=Fail2c.jpg









http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/pHosting.php?do=show&type=f&id=10685&title=Fail1c.jpg


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## sketch804 (Mar 2, 2011)

you know if you take some natural looking sand, and put glue between the rocks you can sorta save that one, maybe. It will help cover up the other glue on the rocks and blend in nicely. just a thought...


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## TheNamelessPoet (May 17, 2012)

Did a blackout with my DIY CO2 (2 liter bottle yeast blah blah blah) while i went on 5 day mini vacation. came home to yeast soup... cant had knocked over co2 bottle and it went into tank... 3+ days of yeast and sugar in a 20 gallon tank at 78 degrees was bad... the dead fish were in suspended animation the water was so "thick" all died but 2... who died a few weeks later. :-(


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## BS87 (Apr 9, 2012)

TheNamelessPoet said:


> Did a blackout with my DIY CO2 (2 liter bottle yeast blah blah blah) while i went on 5 day mini vacation. came home to yeast soup... cant had knocked over co2 bottle and it went into tank... 3+ days of yeast and sugar in a 20 gallon tank at 78 degrees was bad... the dead fish were in suspended animation the water was so "thick" all died but 2... who died a few weeks later. :-(


Did you have it on top of the tank or something?


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## ThatGuyWithTheFish (Apr 29, 2012)

When I got my T5NO, the seller didn't include the support system. It's bad because the fixture isn't actually 30', as advertized, and is shorter than the length of the tank. I thought, well I'll just use a square of cardboard in the corner. I dropped it in there many times and ruined two light bulbs.


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## whickerda (Sep 22, 2009)

Many years ago one of my first DIY tank builds was a 110 gal acrylic tank. I had it set up as a reef tank with about 3-4 inches of live sand and at least 100 pounds of live rock. It had dozens of corals and about a dozen fish. It was fine for over a year until one day one of the end panels literally popped of with no warning. I don't mean cracked or leaked. I mean the entire end panel popped off and the entire contents of the tank drained into the carpet in seconds.

The silver lining-it happened on a Saturday morning at about 8:30am. If it had happened 24 hours before or 48 hours after I would have been at work and everything would have perished. As it was I was home and had an empty 75gal in the garage and I was able to save most of my stock. The funk in that carpet never came out though.

The moral of the story-never give up. I later built a 300 gallon acrylic tank that is still in use today over ten years later. I had under-engineered the 110.


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## LAKE (Jul 9, 2012)

-When quite young, a friend had surplus electrical supplies and built 5 DIY lights to hang over a 6' tank. He reluctantly helped me build 1 light for on the lid of a 3' tank but would not elaborate on his reluctance, it wasn't $. Figured out quickly that depth of water and height of lights was important! Thought of a Bill Cosby Commercial...

-Set up a 30 G in a temp. second floor apartment home. Heard a lil pop moving it so it got set up on the balcony to make sure it held water (-30 C). Great! Get it inside. Set up, cycling, POP! End glass W-crack. Buckets n paint trays under (prepared), syphon half, emergency call, got to go NOW! Heaved stand and tank onto balcony. 30 hours later I couldn't budge the block of ice. 6 months of melt, trickle, freeze.

-Friend repaired a 6' tank, ran for years. Set up a computer on the floor next to it for a weekend or little longer. His wife heard the vulgar Parrot screaming, yelled shut up and he replied, serves you right. End seal popped and had drained 50+ G directly on the running computer.

-9 chamber, 600 G tank fed, sustainable breeder/separator system for maintaining a Cardinal school in a warehouse monster fish display tank. Perfect balance for almost 3 years, then. The Cardinal school grew by the day for a week before the monsters decided to get them where they enter the tank. Two overhead doors in the back of the warehouse were tsunami victims, and everything in between.


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## TheNamelessPoet (May 17, 2012)

BS87 said:


> Did you have it on top of the tank or something?


 not at all. i had a little tiny 16 oz bottle as my thing to catch anything that made it out of the 2 liter... but when it was knocked over it all pored into the small one filling it up. the pressure just forced the sugar/yeast into the tank and the warm water unfortunatly in 5 days made it go crazy growing


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## dubels (Jun 14, 2012)

I just had one of my DIY CO2 explode. Think the check valve stuck or something causing the pressure to build up. The hose fittings exploded off and I had yeast mixture spraying all over my living room. Fun to clean up...


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## Siggav (Jun 29, 2009)

I also had the cat knocks over DIY Co2 incident which then siphons into the tank leading to foul smelling sugar yeast soup and dead fish.

..Ive not run Co2 in a tank since.


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## sketch804 (Mar 2, 2011)

screw some DIY Co2, I never had any luck with that..found its way into my tank a few times and was never constant. These are some horrible stories, esp the person who had a 300gal tank seam bust on him!


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## proaudio55 (Oct 20, 2011)

Yep, CO2 is a tough one... Too little and you just get blaaaa growth, too much and you kill everyone.

I measure my CO2 flow with a rotameter. One day the needle valve got tweeked and I didn't notice the flow had changed from 10cc/min to 15cc/min. When I woke up, all the fish were stunned and/or gasping on top.








http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/pHosting.php?do=show&type=f&id=8900&title=CO2_ratesc.jpg


Here I just discovered the situation. Emergency response:
~Shut off CO2
~Override the timer and set the lights to full blast. 
~Put in air stone and bubble the heck out of the tank
~Apologize profusely to the residents 
~Cross your fingers









http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/pHosting.php?do=show&type=f&id=10840&title=almsot_fish_killc.jpg


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## ~~~ (Apr 2, 2012)

0.o
Plenty of non-DIY fails.
Always screw the little bolts on the FX5 all the way and all of them.
2 gallons on the floor is like 1934502893075 gallons it seems.

I have an overflow thats drilled with a hole, but I have no sump. so its an empty overflow box with a hole in the bottom, a rock, and a net.
So when I fill the tank after a w/c I stop it just before the little forks. So it doesn't flow into the box.
Well, no problems yet, but I'm getting a ps3 soon and one day I'm going to be playing something and I'll flood the house.


One last phrase of wisdom: Concrete floors trump all.


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## xmas_one (Feb 5, 2010)

Drilling a tempered bottom tank.


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## accordztech (Dec 6, 2004)

Had a DIY co2 can explode on me by dropping it. But it wasnt the yeast method. It was the one that hagen sells in packets. 

It was the most horrible smell in my room. Wost part was some of it got into my carpet.

After that I bought a pressurized co2 system lol


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## talontsiawd (Oct 19, 2008)

~~~ said:


> 0.o
> 
> 2 gallons on the floor is like 1934502893075 gallons it seems.


I lol'd at that. I spilled maybe 2-3 gallons or so when I first got my canister on a rookie mistake and ended up tearing my whole room down to clean it.


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## BS87 (Apr 9, 2012)

~~~ said:


> 0.o
> Plenty of non-DIY fails.
> Always screw the little bolts on the FX5 all the way and all of them.
> 2 gallons on the floor is like 1934502893075 gallons it seems.
> ...


Surely you could plug it with some plumbing supplies??


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## ugn (Mar 26, 2012)

So it isn't just me? 
The room where I have my tanks has the cleanest floor/most often washen in the whole house?


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## kubalik (Jul 8, 2011)

This is good , made me laugh hard especially a few posts . When I was muuuuch younger got my first tank , about 20 gallons , got it set up first day , got a few guppies from a friend , didn't get a heater. The temp went down a little , but i was very concerned so I grabbed my fathers industrial kind of heater ( it must have been 1000 watts at least ) I submerged it, plugged it, temperature raised very quickly , I pulled the heater out before I unplugged it . It got red and exploded right away , pieces landed on the carpet , burned it in a few different spots. Luckily I didn't get hurt .... 
Carpet needed to get replaced,the guppies were happy without a heater , I wasn't very happy , had to hear a lot of crap from my parents back then , my father wasn't happy , he had to hear a lot of crap from my mom ( he bought me the tank) .


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## bucilini (Jun 28, 2012)

As someone who is starting in this hobby... i've learned a lot from this thread...This should be kept up as a sticky with thing that we've failed at, so others wont have to go down that road.


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## oliver d (Nov 17, 2011)

two weeks ago went for a short holiday came back to find all my aquariums wiped out,had a power failiure,back ups failed to come in because i had not tested them in a year thought they would work as they had never failed.The water temps came up to over 38 C/98 F.


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