salinity scanning device advice needed

[nightmarepl]

hey guys, so im planning of setting up a QT tank and trying the Hypo salinity method of killing ich supposedly its the easiest yet the safest way without using copper....

well i have a refactometer that i purchased from petco a year ago and ive been using it to measure my salinity in my current DT but how do you really know its reading correctly any time you put distilled water it shows zero
but if you put salt water itll show lets say 1.025 but you can bring the calibration down to read 1.020 and then read distilled water again and youll still get zero...

so i work in a lab where they make inks and one of the scientist lent me a device here is the link
https://www.amazon.com/Atago-PAL-1-...refractometer&qid=1556798352&s=gateway&sr=8-3

this thing supposedly measure salinity to the finest of points i mean its $300 better measure it good
so when i tested it with a cup of salt water it showed up 0.5 percent but the refactometer i have is showing 0.7-0.8 percent which is alittle off and doing hypo requires that sweet spot supposedly..

 

[Retro Reefer]

The link is for a Brix meter, it’s not really suitable for salinity measurements

 

[nightmarepl]

The link is for a Brix meter, it’s not really suitable for salinity measurements

cant you just do a conversion scale?
https://www.winning-homebrew.com/specific-gravity-to-brix.html
something like this and get it to the perfect brix?

 

[link81]

doubtful.
at least not consistently. Brix is going to measure all of the dissolved solids in the solution. I don't think the ratio will remain constant in our tanks.

 

[KStatefan]

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-12/rhf/index.php#15

 

[Retro Reefer]

I see it shows values below 4% so It may work with the conversion , my brother in law had a Brix Refractometer and the because the Brix scale is so wide it was really hard to get a accurate reading.

 

[nightmarepl]

I see it shows values below 4% so It may work with the conversion , my brother in law had a Brix Refractometer and the because the Brix scale is so wide it was really hard to get a accurate reading.

ahh so im better off getting my refactometer calibrated correctly and going from there.

 

[Retro Reefer]

ahh so im better off getting my refactometer calibrated correctly and going from there.

That’s what I would do.

 

[nightmarepl]

That’s what I would do.

im trying to do hyposalinty to cure my tang and other fish from Ich, the tang isnt doing very well so need to be quick about this..
so my general idea is to buy a 20g tank, sponge filter, mini 50gph pump to move the water alittle, and heater...
now i was thinking of taking out 5g of water from my current tank and 5g of freshly made water adding them into the QT and taking out a big piece of live rock taking that and putting it into the QT aswell
then transfer over the fish let them adjust for a few hours and slowly bring down that salinity of the tank would this keep the bioload in check? without having to cycle the tank completely and having major ammonia jumps?

 

[Retro Reefer]

I haven’t done much hypo salinity treatments but I wouldn’t worry about using live rock for biological filtration in your QT, you can use a ammonia badge and prime to reduce it if needed.

 

[Retro Reefer]

For what it’s worth I have seen big deviations in commercial calibration solution so make my own.. 1.55 grams iodized salt to 40.25 grams distilled water makes a 35ppt solution

 

[diverpat]

I use a digital Brix refractometer only because i have one left over from homebrewing beer. I came up with this chart to help convert to lower salinities. It seems to be accurate enough for my needs. It's based off of the table in the Reefkeeping link above and extrapolated back to zero. I use the MA871 from Milwaukee Instruments.

 

[HOOPDEEZ]

Make sure to calibrate your refractometer using a calibration solution (usually 35ppt) if I calibrated mine using rodi it would be way off.