Refractometer Stupidity

[redfishbluefish]

My stupidity will never cease to amaze me!

I dropped my refractometer about a month or so ago, and thought nothing of it, as I had made my last reading before starting to add new water to my tank. I placed the refractometer into the little case, ready to use at next weeks water change

Now realizing that I was adding more and more salt didn’t hit me until today, and I think it was because I never made exactly 15 gallons…..sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. So the fact that I was consistently adding more salt each week wasn’t caught until today. I noted that the water line in the Brute was a little below the indent in the can, and knew I had less than 15 gallons. But the refractometer was saying to add more salt (after already adding the typical 9 cups of RC). So I pulled out the calibration fluid and, after re-calibrating, found that my tank was now at 1.030 SG…..WOW!

Dropping the refractometer messed up the calibration. So I’m now slowly lowering the salinity back down to the target 1.026 SG. I’m shooting to do this over the next month…nice and slow. And, FYI, no noted change is corals or fish with the higher SG that I can see.

I'm an idiot!

 

[mnat]

1.03 isn't great but it is not terrible. When we were running HOB everything and were topping off by hand, our salinty could hover there for a few days. I usually just corrected it when I did the weekly water change.

 

[panmanmatt]

Paul there really is no need to wait to drop the salinity you can do it in by just adding some RO water to the tank. Raising the salinity needs to be done over time but dropping it can be done immediately. Especially with such as small drop as what you're doing.

 

[redfishbluefish]

Paul there really is no need to wait to drop the salinity you can do it in by just adding some RO water to the tank. Raising the salinity needs to be done over time but dropping it can be done immediately. Especially with such as small drop as what you're doing.

But what about my inverts. I'm not so concerned about the fish and corals, but the snails and shimp...especially about the snails. I was under the impression that they are very susceptible to changes in salinity.

 

[NikkiT]

Inverts should be fine. Drop .001 per day for 4 days. Been there, done that, snails were fine.

 

[panmanmatt]

You're only talking about a 4/1000 drop in salinity. Tidal changes cause a larger swing than that.