my tang has got an itch.

pegasus

pegasus

Well-Known Member
trigger40 said:
i used bottled water to calibrate. is that good enough? the ich is getting bad agian too...
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If it was distilled bottled water, and not filtered water, it should be fine. Filtered (purified) water is NOT good enough. It has to be distilled.
 
trigger40

trigger40

Well-Known Member
i got some distilled water today. the bottled water was close but not exact. the salinity this morning was 1.008. the ich is now manageable.
 
2014FishKiller

2014FishKiller

Member
pegasus said:
His meter was reading 1.008 during the hypo salinity treatment, but was 5 points off. This means the water was actually 1.013, which is not low (hypo) enough to kill ick. His ick came back.

Now think about this: if the meter was showing 1.024 before he attempted hypo treatment, and his meter was 5 points low, his tank water would have actually been 1.029... which is hyper salinity... which would stress the fish, weaken their immunity systems, and make them vulnerable to ick.

Of course, none of this is relevant to what is happening because he hasn't accurately calibrated his refractometer. You can't do it with bottled water. It may be off by far more than 5 points, or it may be dead on. We won't know until he checks it with the right solution (distilled water or calibration solution), which work on the same principle. Solution has a specific amount of gravity, which you match your refractometer to. Distilled water has zero specific gravity, so you match your refractometer to zero. Waiting for the update...
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I believe this how I get the ICH, people may need to watching out for top off water, especially for the reef tank.
 
pegasus

pegasus

Well-Known Member
2014FishKiller said:
I believe this how I get the ICH, people may need to watching out for top off water, especially for the reef tank.
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True. Not topping off your tank will cause high salinity. That's why I depend on an ATO to take care of it for me. I can't depend on myself to remember to top the tank off... lol!!!
 
bang guy

bang guy

Moderator
Caution - Some of the cheaper refractometers on the market today cannot be accurately calibrated with distilled water. Unfortunately, some of the devices coming from outside the US are arriving with an inaccurate scale. They can be used but they need to be calibrated to a known salinity other than zero. 35ppt solutions are available and will work just fine to calibrate these devices. I've seen more than one that was still significantly off after being calibrated to zero.
 
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