I bought expensive live rock from Florida to set up my brand new tank. I was so excited, told them to leave allllll the good hitchhikers. I’d been planning and researching this for months, getting back into saltwater after a 15+ year hiatus.
Well I’d never used a refractometer before, back in the day I always used a hydrometer to measure salinity (this will be important later). I followed directions that came with it to calibrate and merrily (yes, merrily) went about my business mixing up my water. After a month I received the rock shipment, and was so careful about inspecting for anything I didn’t want added to my pristine new tank. I was really exciting about all the little beneficial crabs, starfish, clams/scallops I found. I put all the rock in my new tank and rearranged the scape just how I wanted.
Almost immediately the starfish started acting strange and dying! I tried to pull them out as fast as I could to put them back in the shipping water that came with the rock but it was too late. Managed to save a few crabs, that’s it. I immediately started testing for everything not knowing what had happened. Salinity perfect, no ammonia, nitrite etc, temperature good. I was completely freaking out. Ran to the store to get more freshwater to mix a new batch and pretty much completely refilled it just to be safe. Animals continued to suffer over the next day or two (the saved crabs went in another tank and thankfully one is still with us).
Finally went to the fish store to have my water tested. The salinity was almost 3x what it’s supposed to be. “But how?!?!” I belted out as everyone in the shop turned to look at me. I tested carefully using my brand new refractometer. Fish store owner informs me I needed to calibrate using a liquid that is set to 1.026 instead of what the directions said which was to use distilled water and set to zero. Went home (this time with premixed saltwater and the testing liquid in tow), and yes it was completely off. I still don’t understand quite how it could have been messed up that badly just from using distilled water but the stupid thing cracked a week later so I now have a much better model that I calibrate before each test just to be safe.
Killed 80% of what was on my beautiful live rock and am now in the process of curing it all in a bucket while my tank is re-cycling.
It was an expensive and heartbreaking lesson, I felt awful for killing so much wildlife.
Not a great pic, but here is my little survivor crab in his temporary home filtering the water. No matter how many expensive and colorful things I eventually add to my tank, he will always be my favorite
