help my salt is 1.030!

Hi i am very freaked out as my tanks been set up for the last 4 months and i have been using a coralife dip in hydrometer which my salt has read at always 1.23- 1.24 but i got a new eye hydrometer which i set up today and its said my salt is 1.030!! i then checked it with my old one and it read 1.025 so that must have read wrong the whole time for me so now im panicking as my salt is soooo high how do i get it back down ?????
Thanks K

 

take out some of the tank water and replace it with ro/di water but doe this slowly to bring it back down.

 

+1 - this should be done over the course of probably a month. Are you sure the new one is correct? I'd take them to the LFS (If they can be trusted ) and get both checked.

 

first of all....dont do anything rash! I would take a sample up before doing anything and have somebody else verify the reading. Although I LOVE my refractometer they are not always accurate. So just run a sample up to your LFS and see what they get. Bring your refractometer up there and see.

If it is 1.030 no rush to do anything fast. The levels have more then likely rising over the last 4 months and your inhabitants are used to it Will cause more harm then anything to drop it fast.

What I would do is just do several small water changes throughout the next several days. Not sure how big your tank is but maybe a 5-10% change with FRESHWATER a couple times a day until it goes down. Dont do a dramatic drop...fish can tolerate it rising more then they can dropping.

Are you topping off with fresh or saltwater. Remember water evaporates leaving the salt in the tank so you should only top off with fresh.

your tank should be fine. What size is it and what do you have in it?

 

if its been that high for 4 months you don't want to panick and do anything drastic. Make sure to slowly bring it down. I would error on the side of caution and just take out 2% or less of the tank water per day and make up with fresh RO/DI

 

Go, slow...if you can, strech it out over 3 to 5 days...

You could run the math for a dilution solution, but I would suspect that a daily 1 to 3% water change would work well.... I would remove "some" system water but not so much as to cause the system to shut down, and then "drip" in the RO/DI make up water.

 

thanks for your reply my tank is 68 gallons and i have a clown fish and a scooter blennie, 2 peppermints a cleaner shrimp some snails a mushroom coral and some button pulps. i have been topping up with ro water only. my original hydrometer was a plastic dial type that you put inside your tank to collect water and it still reads 1.025. My new eye scope one i got today i got it out to calobrate it woth di water and it was allready set at 0 so i then checked my tank and it read 1.030 ! thats a major difference in readings!
K

 

yeah I had something very similar happen to me that happened to you! Unfortunatly I over-reacted and dropped things too fast.

Again your fish have become adjusted to the higher salinity so goooo slow! Your shrimp in particular are going to be highly susciptable to the water change (downward shifts more then up) so I would maybe only go 5% a day until it gets down to 1.025 or so!

 

IMO I would take a sample to the LFS and see what they come up with. Also as others have said, I wouldnt trust a hydrometer anyways, either way. Do yourself a favor and get a decent refractometer with an automatic temp calibration. It will be the best $40-$60 you could spend on the tank

 

don't do anything rash. Fish can tolerate salinities too high much better than too low. Like everyone said before me, just go slow.