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What's the worst purchase you ever made?

14K views 63 replies 55 participants last post by  mousky 
#1 ·
I'll start.

Powerhead that oscillates back and forth. Died within a week.
 
#3 ·
Warm white bulbs for a planted tank...I had a really bad outbreak of BBA that I attribute mainly to them. I switched them out with aquarilux bulbs. They are cheap, provide proper spectrum, and can be found at most hardware stores.
 
#9 ·
I dont remember the name of this (supposedly algae eating) fish. It's huge and it's mouth is formed to suck on things. I bought it at an lfs(tong's) for $24 bucks with a two day guarantee. It didnt' even eat a single bit of algae(any type) and died on the beginning of the third day.
 
#10 ·
Man, I really like my Fluval canisters... Never had a problem. Are you guys playing football with them?!

Anyway-- worst thing I ever bought (besides a 30" aquarium) was a product called Aquarium Plant Vital which was upposed to replace CO2. This was WAY before Excel which I hear works well. I think it was a Mark Weiss product...Snake oil, it was totally worthless, IMO.
 
#11 ·
Emperor 400 ??? I love my bio-wheel, I think they work well besides the priming problem, but only good for fish tanks.
The worst filter I brought was the Whisper 3.
Besides that the JBJ algae magnet and the JBJ 2 way powerhead is also on top of my worst list and of cost the plastic plants.
 
#14 ·
For me it has to be AmQuel, after more than 10 years of using Tetra Aquasafe for some stupid reason I decided to give AmQuel a shot. Killed all my apistos and rams in one day :-(

Disclaimer: it was obviously due to heavy metals in my tap water than AmQuel is not supposed to fix. Perhaps that was the most "stupid" purchase come to think of it :)

Giancarlo Podio
 
#15 ·
tap water purifier...

when I first started keeping a tank I thought it would help with my liquid rock. I should've invested in an ro unit instead. I ended up tossing it when we moved. It was a pain and I had to change the inserts constantly. thanksfully I have wonderfully soft water now. Now all I have to do is add baking soda to keep the kh up!
 
#16 ·
I have used plenty of Red Sea test kits, P04 always worked great. Fe never worked great..... I wonder if it's operator error? Perhaps the color charts were read wrong or something......

Worst thing I ever bought was glass tops made by Hagen, specifically the ones for non-centerbraced tanks, with thier own plastic centerbrace...
 
#19 ·
My stupidest purchase was a canister filter that had a clip missing..... being a canister virgin, i had no idea that it would leak A TON of water into my house.....fellas if you are going to buy a canister filter used, make sure it has all the clips!!!! the dishonest seller might not even warn you about it!!!!
 
#24 ·
Justin Fournier said:
I have used plenty of Red Sea test kits, P04 always worked great. Fe never worked great..... I wonder if it's operator error? Perhaps the color charts were read wrong or something......
Hey Justin,

I only just now saw your comment, and thought I'd explain why I pooped on the RS kits.

Operator error is always a possiblity with me, lol, but it was not the case with the kits I had, and I've never had trouble detecting color variations. My belief is that the kits where old -- sitting on the shelf for who knows how long -- and one or both of the reagents had expired. I think this is probably not an uncommon problem with certain "hobby" kits. My Hach kits come with dry reagents neatly packaged and premeasured, and an expiry is printed on the packs. They aren't cheap but worth every penny IMHO.
 
#25 ·
For me the worst purchase was a skimmer for a reef tank. I bought a Red Sea Berlin skimmer and it was the most finicky thing I ever had. Then I made an ETS style skimmer and later a tall downdraft and really found out how bad the Red Sea really was as a skimmer. Lucky if it pulled out 20% of what the homemade did.
 
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