Salinity Equation

Long story short, my refractometer was a bit off, so what I thought was 1.026 was really 1.029, and 1.030 in my second tank

I'm working on getting it down, but the math and what I'm doing doesn't really seem to be adding up.
Unless I'm wrong on the amount of actual water in my tank, and I'm under-guessing.

Anyway, this is correct, right?
In the 1 tank, I know there's 31 gallons total, so...
If I take out 2 gallons
29(1.029) + 2(1.000) Divided by 31
So 29.841 + 2 = 31.841/31
31.841/31 = 1.027

It seems like it's not going down the way it should, but again perhaps I'm off on the amount of water in the tank.
In my 60G I'm guessing it's 45G with displacement, but maybe not.

How bad is 1.030 salinity? REAL bad?
I've got both down to around 1.027 and 1.028 right now, still slowly knocking it down.

 

1.030 is not bad. Just keep diluting like your doing for the next couple days. It'll come down gradually and all will be well. No need to panic, unless you like to lol

 

agree.

 

I do like to panic...

I thought something might be wrong with my refractometer, so I took some water in, and the person who tested it was like, "1.030! OMG! This can kill ALL your fish!"

And I was like, "Well, they seem fine... and all the corals are out and about"

I just feel like putting in the R/O water at 1.000 should be making a quicker dent.
Also, I know you're supposed to go slow, but why can you acclimate a new fish in an hour or 2 with a drip from like 1.020 or lower in some cases to 1.026, but if you want to dilute the whole tank everyone is like, "Do it over a few days"

 

Fish can acclimate quicker than snails, shrimp, and some corals. So that's part of it! Also, at least with me, the fish i get have been in a bag for a day, so their waste is built up and probably worse for the fish than a shock due to a salinity change! Even if ya bought at a LFS, the stress of being in a bag in its own waste is prob worse than the salinity change.

Are you using RO or RODI water?

But i think that slow is usually better when you have a choice. Especially when your tank is used to 1.03.

And I also think that a decent amount of folk on here only acclimate their fish for about 30 minutes or so, float, swap some water and net and drop

 

That all makes sense... I was just wondering if there was a real downside to just taking out 3-4 gallons and putting in the R/O right away, just going from like 1.029 to 1.027 immediately. Wasn't sure if that was too shocking.

I'm not sure about the R/O and RODI water. I get it from a LFS, there's 2 hoses, one with pre-mixed salt and one that I think is "R/O" but it could also be RODI

Is RODI better?

 

Yeah rodi is better, but I'm guessing that's what ur lfs has!

I once upon a time was using ro water and had cyano issues. They went away after switching to rodi. The di part of rodi basically finishes taking the last of the solids out of the water that the ro doesn't get. I'd suggest looking into getting one for ur house. Will prob save ya money and the hassle I going to your lfs every week

 

When it comes to changing anything in our tanks it is ALWAYS best to do it SLOWLY just because of how much we still don't know