Calibrating a refractometer

[captexas]

How many of you actually calibrate your refractometer with distilled water as the instructions say? I'm just curious how big a difference there would be from using distilled versus RO/DI water? Also, the instructions for mine state it should be calibrated with the ambient temp being 68 degrees for the automatic temp compensation to be accurate. Does everyone do that or just do it at regular room temp (my house is around 77)?

[jaded]

your supposed to calibrate these things???

[jaded]

no wonder all my my fish look bloated and irritable

[NaCl_H2O]

Cal mine with RO/DI at room temp, about once every 30 days or so

[CD]

We used distilled water to calibrate (just happened to have some)...ambient room temp was probably around 75F or so. I can't think of any reason RO/DI wouldn't work just as well though. See following quote:

" The distillation process removes almost all impurities from water. Distillers are commonly used for removing nitrate, bacteria, sodium, hardness, dissolved solids, most organic compounds, heavy metals, and radionucleides from water. Distillers remove about 99.5 percent of the impurities from the original water. "

So as long as your RO/DI unit is removing around 99.5 percent of the impurities, then there's no reason is shouldn't be just as good.

Wendy

[GaryP]

I hate those durn radionucleides in my water. The glow keeps me up at night.

[Reefaholic1980]

I did mine and got it down to 69F and went to calibrate it, but it was calibrated from the factory.