Biggest scares you've had as a fish keeper?

[BIG-G]

Salt creep got to an outlet and started a small fire that quickly went out, blacked the wall behind the tank, scared me pretty bad.

I got shocked once reaching into a tank that a power head had split down the side.

A story that happened at the LFS near me.
They had an associate that was supposed to keep check on things, feeding animals, bagging, topping off sumps and such.
Well he wasn’t checking the sump on a coral frag tank.
I myself had told them a couple of times their sump was getting low the return pump was blowing bubbles into the display. But what I didn’t know was they had the heater in the same compartment as the return pump.
Over the weekend the sump got low below the heater, it exploded, caught fire and the only thing that saved the building was the fire under the tank caused the bottom of the tank to blow and it put the fire out.

 

[GentleGiantsCichlidKeeper]

My biggest scare was a major leak. When I used to have a Goldfish tank set-up years ago, I had a leak that almost leaked all the water out the tank. I came home right in time when only half of the tank's water was gone (My poor carpet) and got the fish out of there. That issue is nothing compared to what i'm seeing on here tho, wow just wow.....

 

[Kingster]

Lemme see

List of would be horrors:
- Everytime I hear leaking water ANYWHERE, Iam instantly in Fight or Flight mode (You’ll see why)
- Fish being all dead
- New fish dying, getting eaten, or killing others

List of firsr hand horrors:
- Overfilled my tank 3 times over last 2 years and flooded the apartment we lived in, PTSD I cant leave it (Should invest in a float switch)
- Lost my fav fish (4 Neon green SDs) due to not being home for a week and due to evaporation motor slowed which lead to slow GPH and very little water movement resulting in lack of oxygen
- Failed to acclimate new fish properly and lost many, tho compensated for most cause apparent cause was unsure, I do often have trouble acclimating fish, mainly due to not always having proper equipment
- Siblings but weird **** in my tank from those DO NOT EAT packets you find in clothes was tossed in some fish food I had, or small plastic toys in my 120, its stressful af
- Leaks of any kind, while setting up my first tank in 2018 being my 120 its corner overflows had some leaks, tho fixed easy with clear silicone I could not sleep at night sometimes thinking I mite have a leak
- Heater failure leading to fish freezing to death or near death, Its why now I only use ehiem heaters as they have always been dependable
- Bought a sick fish and cross contaminated? lost a good $300 worth of fish for a $50 baby sunshine pleco cause I was impatient and didn’t have a QT tank

Ive had pretty much every screw up you can have, and Ive paid dearly for them, but my love for the hobby brushs aside the sad part and takes each chance to learn from my mistake to not repeat it and to let others learn from my mistakes. If not learned anything hope yall found something interesting in this response

 

[the big kahuna]

Getting to old or maybe lazy to multi-task. While filling up the 300 during a water change, My brain shut down and I decided to do oil changes on both vehicles in my garage. Halfway through the second truck my brain rebooted and I remembered the initial task I was doing. It didn't over flow but if a fly would've landed on the water it surely would've drained over. Nowadays I sit in my man cave and watch TV till I'm done servicing the tank.

 

[Matteus]

I came home to the 19th-floor condo in which I lived at the time (in the 1980's) to find my new 100-gallon aquarium had split a seam and lost about 80 gallons of water...which had somehow vanished. The wood parquet was damp, no standing water...everything had found its way through some gap or crack in the poured concrete. Never heard a word from neighbours or from management; that water just seemed to disappear. I still have mental images of somebody in that building drilling a hole in their ceiling to hang a plant hook and having 80-gallons of water come pouring mysteriously out...

And, in the 90's, one of my favourite fish was a large-ish electric catfish, maybe around 12-14 inches. He spent all his time sitting like a giant inert lump of snot in his 120-gallon home, rarely moved unless to feed, but I had owned him (her?) for years and I liked him. One day I was working in the tank, as I often had in the past, but I got careless and cocky and didn't keep watch. He moved towards me and gave me a little love-zap...which so startled me that I involuntarily yanked my arm back and out of the tank, smashing my arm on the tank stand, chipping a bone in my elbow, shattering a glass cover leaning there and slicing my arm to the tune of over a dozen stitches. Not so much scary, more of a reminder to stay alert and to avoid complacency.

The scariest? No contest: I once received a phone call from my wife telling me that she had found a snake that had escaped its container and was loose in the house. This had happened a few times in the past, and the escapee had always been a hatchling kingsnake or cornsnake (I used to breed snakes). A small, colourful, docile 15-inch snake did not phase my wife; but this time the fugitive was an adult bullsnake, well over 6 feet in length, coiled on the floor in the centre of the living room, hissing and striking as only a bullsnake can. She discovered it while vacuuming...in the nude!

The scary part was coming home that day...

Wow these are all crazy stories. Amazing- I want my wife to vacuum nude ?

 

[Matteus]

I was working on a friends tank that was on the floor beneath another tank, so limited access. As I was tinkering my knee touched the ground and I got zapped pretty badly.

so we killed all the power and started fishing around to see what was going on and pulled one of the heaters out of the sump compartment to find it broken in half. Luckily I didn’t grab the broken glass part but was very close to it. The bottom piece of glass is still inside the sump to this day

 

[Blakewater]

One time I forgot to turn my sump pump back on during a refill with the hose after a water change. My WiFi randomly went out on my computer (router is in the fish room) and I came in too 100g+ all over the floor.

I was up till 4am with a shop vac cleaning it all up

 

[FINWIN]

I was working on a friends tank that was on the floor beneath another tank, so limited access. As I was tinkering my knee touched the ground and I got zapped pretty badly.

so we killed all the power and started fishing around to see what was going on and pulled one of the heaters out of the sump compartment to find it broken in half. Luckily I didn’t grab the broken glass part but was very close to it. The bottom piece of glass is still inside the sump to this dayView attachment 1446999

One time I forgot to turn my sump pump back on during a refill with the hose after a water change. My WiFi randomly went out on my computer (router is in the fish room) and I came in too 100g+ all over the floor.

I was up till 4am with a shop vac cleaning it all up

Your router is in the FISH ROOM??! Wow, might wanna find another spot if possible...or maybe mount it on a shelf?

 

[Magnus_Bane]

I'd say my worst scare was a few years ago when I was sitting in the garage (the fish room at the time) and I heard what sounded like a creaky moan come from my right. So I look over and just as I did I watched my 60g tank, with my favorite fish ever, suddenly lurch towards the left as the stand it was one had buckled from underneath. Thankfully I had the reflexes of a ninja and was able to race over to the tank and stabilize it long enough to drain half of the tank and temporarily rehouse Jr.

Thankfully I didn't lose Jr. or the tank in the process but I did lose the stand however, r.i.p. tank stand. Also had basically the same thing happen earlier this year with a stand I made for my plastic pond tank but that wasn't nearly as terrifying as the 60g incident. Lol least to say I much prefer the plastic tank to the glass one for it's superior resilience.