Went away for a week, came back to 1.60 salinity...??

[gobytron]

Originally Posted by Myka

There is no reason to start getting rude. Your story doesn't make sense, so either there is a hole in the story or there is user error. That error could be with handling the refractometer or it could be something like adding SW instead of FW. It makes perfect sense that someone would say user error, and you would say the same thing. I have about 20 years of reefing experience and I still make stupid mistakes.

You didn't say the corals were lost. You said "my coral are affected" which really makes it sound that simply the corals are irritated.

When was the last time you checked the specific gravity of the tank and had it within normal range? If you checked just before you left, and you came back after a week to 1.060 then someone added A LOT of salt to your tank. Evaporation would not account for that amount of salt in the system even under extreme circumstances - maybe if you had a flat dish of water with a fan blowing on it. If you are sure no one added salt directly to the tank then I think your refractometer is not reading the high SG correctly, and it was probably more like 1.035-1.040 to begin with. Given the right conditions I could see SG getting that high with no FW top off, but not under normal conditions. How much FW did it take to lower the SG?

I guess you need 4000 plus posts to have reason to be rude?

Maybe there is a part of the story missing, but I don't know what it is.
I do know my refractometer is working perfectly and my salinity was at 1.060.

Remember, i had to do 3 30 gallon water changes to get it back to 1.024 or so.

I didn't imagine those and I also didn't imagine the levels in my other tanks measuring normal.

I also must have checked the salinity level 6 times before believing what i was seeing.

[Delphinus]

Don't get grumpy, people are trying to help you. I have to ask the questions I asked because I don't know you, I don't know your tank and I don't know your setup so I have to try to fill in the blanks as best I can. I assume others are in a similar situation as well. Try not to be grumpy as we try to get the full picture here. I am legitimately trying to help here...

Anyhow if you follow my earlier post, 1.060 (I assume you meant 1.06, because 1.6 would be .. ketchup, maybe, or jello or something. For comparison's sake, I think the Great Salt Lake in Utah is in the ballpark of 1.17 and the Dead Sea is something like 1.25.)

If you follow my earlier post, going to 1.060 would take a rather extraordinary amount of salt which is why I find it easier to suspect a reading error. It doesn't take much to throw a refractometer off (an air bubble, an incomplete film of water between the glass and cover, or debris, etc.) In actual fact I would NOT suspect a calibration error because that it is so far off the charts.

But if you're absolutely certain there was no error in the reading then basically your water was too salty. (And, incidentally, I did the math and I agree that it would take 3, 30 gallon water changes (using 1.000 water) to take 120gal @1.060 down to 1.025, so if that is what you did, then I believe you that your water was that salty.)

But how you got there??? That is weird. Somehow something dissolved into the tank that added to the water's specific gravity, or that amount of salt was somehow added (either wittingly or unwantonly). Are you certain it hasn't been creeping up over a long period of time and things just came to a head while you were away?

Could something have died and melted and thus contributed to a temporary spike in SG? But you'd think you'd basically have a tank of death at that point with ammonia off the charts.

Do you run a calcium reactor by chance?

[Delphinus]

Wow a lot of posts happened in the 20 minutes it apparently took me to type that last reply in.

Good luck, I hope you get it all sorted out, whatever the case may be, or have been ...