Good Aquarium Refractometer?

[liquid88]

Can anyone recommend a decent yet affordable refractometer? I'm slowly acquiring equipment for starting up a brackish tank and I would like it to be as headache free as possible.

[Welch4]

I use marine-depot's refrac. Wasnt too expensive. Easy to read under a bright light. Comes with a pipette, adjustment screwdriver, and microfiber cleaning cloth. Does not come with calibration fuild. So you would either want to get a bottle or bring it to a LFS that could calibrate it for you. They have two models for brackish you want to get the version that has readings from 1.000 and up instead of 1.020 and up.

[liquid88]

Welch, thanks for the suggestion, I've been shopping around Amazon a bit as well. I just don't know if I would be willing to rely on a $25 example when there are some (like the one you mentioned) that are double or even triple the price. I'm just uncertain what to look for in a good refractometer.

[Welch4]

I cannot attest to the 25 one your looking at. In general you want one the is automatic temperature compensating or ATC for short. Outside of that you want one thats built well easy to read/operate. To put it in perspective there are lab grade ones that go for several hundred dollars, so even 50 is cheap. I would just look at the user reviews or wait for one of our more seasoned members to chime in.

[Pufferpunk]

As long as it's calibrated with the proper solution, the cheap ones work great!

[Welch4]

÷1 to pp for correcting me on another post. The correct salinity would be 1.026

[Pufferpunk]

1.026 for keeping corals. Yes, that is the calibration solution SG (actually, 1.0265). SW fish are perfectly fine at 1.020. BW is anything between 1.000-1.018.

[Welch4]

Slipped up again... thanks PP

[liquid88]

Thanks for the advice everyone. I'll keep it mind.