Refractometer - ???

Arthur

Arthur

Member
Maybe Im trying to much… I have mixed 125 reef tank. For last 5 years Im using Refractometers. There is many different opinions about this. With what to calibrate? RO water or Refractometer fluid. Recently I found inconsistencies. Ill try to explain it to you. I have 2 Refractometers. 1 4 years old 1 two years old. Two bottles of refractometer fluids. One old and one new ( year old). Problem. When I calibrate with those fluids I have different results in my tank water salinity. 0.024 and 0.026 which tells me fluids are bad ( at least one of them). So i calibrated them with RO water. Now salinity shows 0.027 on both refractometers. What you guys think? Any help, suggestions? It is really frustrating. I had to add that all is good in my reef.
 
Honestly I relied on a refracto for the last couple years and in my opinion they vary too much. I calibrated mine with the 35ppt solution and rodi water. Never consistent. People will generally tell you that there is no certainty and you should just aim to be within the .023-.026 range in general. I myself bought the Milwaukee Digital Refracto and love it, seems far more accurate.
 
I thought about that one too. Do you like it? You think its more accurate?
r33fswagg3r said:
Honestly I relied on a refract for the last couple years and in my opinion they vary too much. I calibrated mine with the 35ppt solution and rodi water. Never consistent. People will generally tell you that there is no certainty and you should just aim to be within the .023-.026 range in general. I myself bought the Milwaukee Digital Refracto and love it, seems far more accurate.
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I just got it on Monday and love it, seems far more accurate. I was going to get the Apex Conductivity/Salinity probe but even that can be inaccurate and require recalibration consistently. I have multiple tanks so it made more sense to have something that has great reviews and can be used for multiple tanks.
 
I've been using the Milwaukee unit for a year and a half with great results. I calibrate frequently with steam distilled water (really easy) and make sure to clean off the lens after each use as to not leave any salt residue. Oh, and after calibration I also double check the unit by using a water sample from my DT.
 
Another guy checking in that uses the milwaukee refractometer :) I used to use the floaty ones but finally picked up one of the digital ones earlier this year and man it's 100x better. Super easy to calibrate, and gets you a reading pretty instantly as well.
 
I use a floating hydrometer from Tropic Marin. I use a 5 gallon bucket of new salt water, drop in the hydrometer, see what it says, match to my refractometer. Even if it was off a little, there's a good 1/2" between numbers, IMO, super accurate. :)
 
taylor t said:
I use a floating hydrometer from Tropic Marin. I use a 5 gallon bucket of new salt water, drop in the hydrometer, see what it says, match to my refractometer. Even if it was off a little, there's a good 1/2" between numbers, IMO, super accurate. :)
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+1 for the tropicmarin floating. It's quite accurate. I use it to calibrate both my apex salinity probe (not worth the money IMO) and my conductivity meter. The Tropicmarin is cheap and easy to use, but you do need to measure the temperature of the sample water accurately and compensate the reading based on temperature.
 
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