tthayer
04/13/2008, 10:58 AM
Hi All,
I thought I would share with you a lesson I just learned that is invaluable.
I had been using a pinpoint salinity monitor for the last couple of months and all seemed to be working fine. About 5 days ago, I noticed some of my snails literally falling off things and some of them dieing. I was checking levels like mad and all seemed to be fine with the salinity showing 51.1 ms.
About 4 days ago, I received my new shipment from Neptune Systems and one of the things included was a conductivity probe. When I hooked it up and put it in the water and it shot straight up to 86.3 ms. My immediate thought was "Oh, no, this thing is broken". After some investigation, I found out that if I moved it to certain parts of the tank, it would have different readings. This led me to believe that maybe this thing was working and that I was getting interference of some kind.
After further investigation, I found out that the best way of reading conductivity is via a drip cup. So off I went to the store and bought a rubber maid water bottle and a 1/2" poly coupling to act as a spout. After drilling a hole and putting in the spout, I used an aqua lifter to pump water into the cup and let it run back into the tank via the spout.
Now, after all of this, I put the conductivity probe in the drip cup and guess what? It shot right back up to 86.3 ms! I freaked and ran down stairs to grab one of my old hydrometers. When I used it, it shot off the scale. I then took the pinpoint probe and placed it in the drip cup and it read the same level as conductivity probe. Now I started a water change immediately.
Lesson Learned?
Never ever, ever, try to measure conductivity or salinity, using a probe, from inside your tank. Use a drip cup!
This whole endeavour cost me somewhere between 6 to 8 Astria snails!
I thought I would share with you a lesson I just learned that is invaluable.
I had been using a pinpoint salinity monitor for the last couple of months and all seemed to be working fine. About 5 days ago, I noticed some of my snails literally falling off things and some of them dieing. I was checking levels like mad and all seemed to be fine with the salinity showing 51.1 ms.
About 4 days ago, I received my new shipment from Neptune Systems and one of the things included was a conductivity probe. When I hooked it up and put it in the water and it shot straight up to 86.3 ms. My immediate thought was "Oh, no, this thing is broken". After some investigation, I found out that if I moved it to certain parts of the tank, it would have different readings. This led me to believe that maybe this thing was working and that I was getting interference of some kind.
After further investigation, I found out that the best way of reading conductivity is via a drip cup. So off I went to the store and bought a rubber maid water bottle and a 1/2" poly coupling to act as a spout. After drilling a hole and putting in the spout, I used an aqua lifter to pump water into the cup and let it run back into the tank via the spout.
Now, after all of this, I put the conductivity probe in the drip cup and guess what? It shot right back up to 86.3 ms! I freaked and ran down stairs to grab one of my old hydrometers. When I used it, it shot off the scale. I then took the pinpoint probe and placed it in the drip cup and it read the same level as conductivity probe. Now I started a water change immediately.
Lesson Learned?
Never ever, ever, try to measure conductivity or salinity, using a probe, from inside your tank. Use a drip cup!
This whole endeavour cost me somewhere between 6 to 8 Astria snails!