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

[Myka]

Originally Posted by gobytron

The proof is in the pudding.
fish were lethargic and almost all coral gone other than some zoas and palys that look like they might come back.

If you don't have suggestions beyond my own personal error please don't post here.

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...it happens.

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?

[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.