Corals don't look right.

I believe you should still have 5ml total. So 2.5 of tank water and 2.5 of rodi. It just has to be a 1:1 ratio. If you used 5and 5 you would be testing 10 ml of water which would throw it out of whack because the test is suppose to be for 5ml.

 

I don't think either is necessarily accurate, but if you're going to dilute, mix your solution first (5 ml w/ reagent) and then dilute with 5 ml of rodi. Grab 5 ml of that 10 ml of solution to test.

 

If he did it that way wouldn't he have to use double the reagent because its 10ml of water total and not 5?

The way I see it is the test is rated for 5ml of water. You need to dilute it 1:1 so to stay within the 5ml limit of water the test is required you should use 2.5ml tank water and 2.5 rodi water. Run the test then double the results.

 

Using 2.5 ml of each it came out to 350. Multiply that by 2 that gives me 700. A little high. Lol

 

It may not be 100% accurate but its better than not knowing at all.

 

Alkalinity is 16.8. I'm thinking my salt is a lot higher than the 1.026 my hydrometer says.

 

Most likely. But like I said before I used reef crystals and it made my cal and alk shoot up. I switched back to regular sea salt and everything fell back to where it should be. I now use regular salt and just dose calcium and alk as needed. My livestock seem to do a lot better with the way I do it now rather than when I used reef crystals and my params were super high.

 

Mag is at 1600. Yeah I've got to get me a refractometer. If my hydrometer is reading lower than the SG actually is that's part of my problem.

 

No. It is 5 ml. You take 5 ml from the 10 ml dilution.

 

Really need to know what your salinity is. If it's high, a simple water change with pure rod I may fix everything.