So I got back into the hobby again after leaving for about 2 years. So far it’s not going well. I set up the tank 2 weeks ago. Put in some zoas about 5 days ago and only one frag is opening out of 5. Added 3 snails and they died.
As a background the tank was set up with real reef live rock (it came wet). I have set up about 5 tanks with this stuff and never had any ammonia or nitrites from the cycle or even nitrates above 20. Haven’t bothered to test that stuff because of it.
Originally I thought temperature fluctuations were the issue but that has since been controlled and they were nothing super crazy. I became skeptical of my refractometer given its age so I decided to have my LFS test my salinity. I was getting salinity of 1.026 but my LFS got 1.016 on their digital refractometer twice. This made sense to me given the snails death. Bought a new refractometer that came calibrated and this one is reading the exact same as my old one, 1.026. I have some calibration solution arriving in a few days but right now I’m totally baffled. Anyone have any other ideas? Tank is 7.4g no fish right now.
As a background the tank was set up with real reef live rock (it came wet). I have set up about 5 tanks with this stuff and never had any ammonia or nitrites from the cycle or even nitrates above 20. Haven’t bothered to test that stuff because of it.
Originally I thought temperature fluctuations were the issue but that has since been controlled and they were nothing super crazy. I became skeptical of my refractometer given its age so I decided to have my LFS test my salinity. I was getting salinity of 1.026 but my LFS got 1.016 on their digital refractometer twice. This made sense to me given the snails death. Bought a new refractometer that came calibrated and this one is reading the exact same as my old one, 1.026. I have some calibration solution arriving in a few days but right now I’m totally baffled. Anyone have any other ideas? Tank is 7.4g no fish right now.