Hydrometer issues

[lmarc78]

Over the last few months I have been loosing all of my fish slowly and haven't been able to figure out why . All of my levels are good and I even took water to the LFS to be tested.
So I was over at a buddies house and he showed me his refractometer.
And then compared it to a hydrometer,pretty close. He gave me his old hydrometer and I went home and tried it on my 125.
I'm sure you can guess what happened then. 1.029
No wonder my fish keep dieing. I have three different hydrometers and all say something different. I just bught one from Red Sea and it seems to be the farthest off over .07
So I'm thinking I need to ditch the crap tastic hydrometers and invest in a nice refract.
Any ideas on a afforable and reliable one?

 

[alex4286]

im also interested in one of these too so I hope someone comes through with some info!

 

[juice_1080]

I picked mine up last week from my LFS for around $80 alot yes but I needed it right then because I thought I was going to have to go through hypo with a fish....anyways if you do some online searching you can find on a doctors site for $40-50.
I thought it was going to be a hassle to test with the thing too but it actually takes less time for me to use the refractometer vs. hydrometer.

 

[m0nk]

You can find a Sybon Refractometer with Automatic Temperature Compensation for under $45. This is the brand I use and it holds calibration fairly well. I have no complaints.

 

[florida joe]

There are many reliable and reasonably priced ($35-55) meters out there I would just make sure the one you get can compensate for temp and can be easily adjusted I like and use one with a knob and not the

[hr]
driver type

 

[fallnhorse]

I doubt that salinity is an issue. I read of reports of lion fish living in 1.053 salinity(conscious marine aquaruamist). The was slow change, water evaporation. Coral would not like extremely high salinity but fish can tolerate a lot of different environments and long as the change is slow. Point being it would not kill fish, i would check ph and especially nitrate level. High nitrate level will give fish black blood.

 

[lmarc78]

My PH is at 8.3 and my nirates are at 0 so the only other thing that is wrong that I can find is the salinity. Either way I only have two fish left and they seem to be ok so far. I'm going to give it a couple of months before I add anything else fish wise.