I hate my tank!

[Tangman]

Sorry to be blunt, but if you are not doing water changes/ top offs with RO/Di water all you are doing is feeding the problem. Useing treated tap water or letting it stand is useless, that may have worked with a fresh water tank but it won't work with SW. You can get a TDS meter at a LFS, but better money spent would be on a RO/DI, as others have said, in the SW hobby a RO/DI unit is part of the basic supplies to have a SW tank, and again , sorry to be blunt, but with out one, you will never have any thing but a slimey lagoon

Originally Posted by jslaney

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Conclusions
-Do more water changes
-Get my water level parameters checked at the LFS
-Start treating my top up water
-Consider getting a phosphate remover and RO/DI unit.

Additional questions

1)How do you test of TDS (Total dissolved solids?). Does that not include dissolved calcium. Is that not a good thing.

2)I have read that increased Calcium can be a good thing for stony corals. Why is it bad for Coraline? I am not treating calcium so it must be coming from my sand and water top ups.

If anyone has any other ideas based on my responses, feel free to let me know.

[jslaney]

So thanks to Syeve's suggestion I went and got my water tested. All I have for specific Grav is a red sea hydrometer. It was reading 1.026 which is perfect as I understand it.

When the very kind fellow at Ocean City tested my water using a refractometer it read as 1.033. So I am guessing that is the biggest problem.

I will still look into getting RO/DI and have allready bought chlorine remover for my top ups.

Lastly thank you for everyones help and I think the lesson here is dont ever trust crappy hydrometers and before you start adding life go get your water double tested.

Jon.