What Is Salinity & the Best Way to Test Your Saltwater Tank?
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- Опубліковано 28 сер 2024
- Parts per thousand or specific gravity? Refractometer versus hydrometer? Where does a beginner even START when it comes to the salinity of their saltwater aquariums or reef tanks!? Lucky for us, Matthew is back and is walking us through not only what salinity is, but also the best ways and practices for getting it right for our saltwater fish and coral. Check it out here!
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The best ways to check reef tank salinity are at Bulk Reef Supply:
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Always used Refractometers in the past. But recently I didn’t realise mine had lost calibration and nearly crashed two tanks. Lost several fish and took more than two weeks of water changes and gradual top-ups with SW to bring things back to true without killing everything else. Bought a Hanna probe and haven’t looked back.
It’s so easy to use. Thats the biggest thing for me. No futzing around with droppers and squinting through the eyepiece. And the precision is great. So easy to check multiple tanks and reservoirs.
This is like saltwater college. You have enough info out to make a Marine Biologist out of all of us👍
Agreed, it’s less beginner content than it is complex content presented in an easy to understand way.
Try weighing your salt with a countertop scale. It helps me make consistent sea water mix. I use 700g of InstentOcean for each 5 gallons of RO/DI water. (Adjust to your ideal specific gravity)
Milwaukee everytime for me!!
no messing about like the hanna one 👍
Excellent work here sir!
Hannah makes great products, but they do some things that drive my crazy. Released the low range nitrate tester which is overly complex, then released the high range shortly after, but reagents are no where to be found. They don’t hold the last reading or show it when you turn it on, so if you missed it, you have to restart from scratch. The packets of reagent could be way easier to open and their salinity checker you have to calibrate monthly, why?! They’re so close to being amazing but need someone increasing the usability of their devices for us hobbyists
“High Precision Hydrometer - Tropic Marin” I prefer this one. When I can’t use it due to a shallow amount of water or I just need a quick/rough reading, I will use a basic $20 refractometer (be sure to calibrate often and don’t rinse the window with very cold or hot water, as this will throw off the calibration).
This the best option. I love the Tropic Marin. For quick mixing I just use the cheap hydrometer, just matching what the tank is. I've never had any luck with refractometers they never hold calibration.
@@ccovemaker in my experience, if I rinse mine with cold or hot water, it goes way out of calibration. I wonder what causes this? That’s my assumption and cause that people are having, but I haven’t confirmed this with other testers..
thank you!
The highest quality refractometer is by a French brand called - Sybon. BRS should carry this brand! Stop slacking boys!
The salinity pen I have i off by 2.5 ppm and then swings goes out further than the. Yea, even when calibrating the pen.
the refractometer is calibrated at 20C, but most saltwater tanks are quite a bit warmer than that, so that alone would not be accurate? who do you achieve reasonable accuracy?
OMG where was this video a year ago? I was using the stupid hydrometer then got a refrac but didn't know about calibration fluid...I didn't know temp effected readings...my salinity was higher than the dead sea for a while. I'm so paranoid about salinity now I recalibrate it every time I use it and worry the fluid will go bad one day and I won't know.
What the difference between the black Milwaukee salinity tester and the green one?
Just the color 🙂
Don't the ATC refractometers automatically compensate for temperature? someone told me it stands for Automatic Temperature Compensation
Exactly right. That's why it's important to wait 45 seconds or so to let the water come to room temperature before looking at the result.
No glass bobber?
That method works great too! Just not something that most beginners are comfortable using from the get go
do you know if a miltimetre could be used just to quick trst the salinity
Some meters use conductivity to estimate salinity, but we haven't tried this on a multimeter.
Personally i think refractometers are no good too often they go out of calibration and i have lost many fish because of it and if the refractometer solution cap if not completly tight it isnt accurate i use the hanna checker and compared it to what red sea salt says thwir salt mixes at half cup per gallon and i tested it and hanna was spot on
Ahh 30 years as a medical laboratory tech. Using refractometers everyday for literally decades, seldom ever have to collaborate. Every use, distilled water as control.
Biggest problem is ppl do not take into account temp.
Hmm although I'm educated in chemistry and know about gravimetry, the gravimetric measuring of seawater never ocurred to me. What I mean with that is the "boiling off of water and weight the remaining salt". I've got a little bit of professional equipment at home, like a really sensitive scale and fine volumetric pipettes. So it could actually work pipetting off like 1000 µL of seawater, weight it and then just let it evaporate over the day and weight it again.
Though while writing this, I notice that salt is hygroscopic and also many of it's individual salts do capture crystal water. I have no idea how this should be dealt with in regards to the definition of salinity. However, one could just weight fresh salt for comparison.
My conductivity based salinity test is a bit weird. It quickly lost it's calibration and I was doing like 37 ppt for weeks. The calibration solution that came with it might be at fault. Or maybe there was just some dirt on the "electrode" that didn't wipe off at the beginning but then later?
Different salt mixtures should have different conductivity at the same weight ratio. I'm not sure if it matters, but with my salt mixture I noticed the conductivity *dropping* significantly after like 24 hours after mixing. That is counter intuitive. Assuming it takes 24 hours to dissolve completely, the conductivity should actually rise. Maybe calcium carbonate is precipitating.
Back to evaporating saltwater...I may play with this a bit. It *could* be a nerdy way to make sure the tester didn't loose calibration when you don't trust the calibration fluid xD . I'm not saying this is better in any way, though.
I just use the one that floats it’s easier than everything u just mentioned😂😂😂
Is this an advertisement to sell brs products?
very cimplicated
To busy selling his products