Surprising Results When Testing Refractometers - Hanna, Milwaukee, Sybon and more

[mustangnum]

Educational video I learned a lot from your videos thanks keep up the good work

[moogman]

So glad I got the cheap, optical refractometer...seems to be the best of the bunch

[MrBigTexFyre]

I noticed you were placing the handheld units in the solution while it was booting up. Try turning it on and letting it start all the way up before placing in water.

[TreasureCorals]

This is a good one, lots to cover and definitely not happy about 2 of the refractometers

[awilson]

Im struggling with my different Salinity Checkers too. I just bought the milwaukee Checker. Because my hanna failed after only 3 months.

[anti-popfpv]

Glad y'all aquarium nerds did all the hard homework. Because most garden nerds don't even know about Brix sugar testing in plants for health and pest resistance. My plants thank you

[The.MrFish]

It would be good to rerun the test and show what value each of them reads with a 35ppm refractometer calibration solution like the continuum or brightwell calibration solution. It would also be interesting to see what reading the others get from the Hanna solution you calibrated the Hanna checkers with

[barbermack]

Thanks for the review!! I will get the good old refractometer instead 😎 Was initially looking the Hanna.

[susantrevino]

I just bought the Hanna Salinity tester. I found its readings to be 0.002-0.003 SP lower than my refractometer. So I called the Hanna lab and spoke to a technician. He sent me information on why the conductivity tester like the Hanna is scientifically more accurate than a refractometer which uses a prism and light. This is what he sent me:
What is Better for Salinity Measurements...Conductivity or Refractometery?
When comparing conductivity to refractometery to measure salinity, the consensus among the scientific community favors conductivity. This is because there is non-conductive material in your sample which can impact the refractive index of seawater but not the actual salt concentration. For example, if we add sugar to artificial seawater, we will see that our salinity value will increase but we have not changed the concentration of salt in the water. If we measured the salinity of that sample with our HI98319 conductivity meter you’ll notice the value is largely unchanged. It is common to have inflated values with a refractometer due to the large number of materials which will affect the density of that water outside of the dissolved salt values. For example, anti-caking agent in salt mixes, organic waste, sugars, potential non-ionic contaminants or uneaten fish food can increase the values produced on a refractometer but this would be less likely to occur on a conductivity meter like the HI98319. Added bonuses of using conductivity to measure salinity are that you no longer have a light interference, and the temperature compensation is of your direct sample and not as influenced by ambient atmosphere near the surface of a prism.
Your thoughts?

[aquazilla]

My refractmeter reads freshly mixed saltwater at 30 ppt when I calibrate using fritz 35ppt solution Hanna says 37 to 38ppt after fresh calibration using their solution. What am I supposed to trust? Both readings are way to far appart to trust.

[vladimirr]

Спасибо за обзор! Только планирую запустить море.

[hamadah]

I was actually looking into buying a device to check my salinity, thanks for the video!

[gb_green]

I’ve been having different readings from a old mechanical and the handheld hanna. The mechanical reads lower than the Hanna. But I believe if you just pick one and match the water changes with one device it would be okay. Consistently is key I believe. I’m about 3 weeks into the hobby. 14g live rock live sand one storm white mutt. No lights yet.

[higgs]

What is the point of using the digital refractometers ? It doesn't take much time to use the optical one and it's easy to read it. What am I missing?

[emmanuelalvarez]

Hello I have a question about the Hanna hi96822. I just bought one and I want to know which one is the value that I should trust. Is it the first reading to come up or the value that comes up when you leave it there longer? I’m soo confused as to which one to really trust

[dobermanguy]

I live a half an hour from the Atlantic Ocean I'm going to try a nano tank with complete ocean water here in fla

[reefglow]

Very good vid. Hard to choose which to believe. I own the Milwaukee but even with my regular refract after calibrating it I tested it with the 35 pts solution and it's off dosnt read the 35 ppt same thing on the Milwaukee unless the calibration solution is bad too. So then again who you trust lol. ( also some people will say don't calibrate with RO to use the 35 ppt solution ) but then again I've measured that solution on both calibrated units and it's also off .🤷‍♂️

[Alejandrojuarez]

Hello! Your aquarium is very pretty.
Do you feed your corals?

[REEFPizza]

so struggle these days found a reliable way to know for sure the salinity level, every system had too much errors margin :S

[foreverfishtank]

Thanks for a great video. Enjoyed watching your results. A little known fact about the conductivity based salinity checkers: They can only be guaranteed to be accurate for freshly mixed salt water. Although they claim to be calibrated to sea water, there is no way they can accurately guess all the charged particles that are in tank water. If there are significant amounts of charged particles in the water other than what they calibrated against - and there almost certainly will be in an established tank - the readings will be thrown off. However, these conductivity testers are very useful when mixing fresh salt water. They are quick and accurate in that case. You just cannot reliably measure your tank water with them.