good salinity checking routine? suggestions?

[Muffin87]

I want to get into the habit of checking my salinity more often.
The issue is using a salinity measuring tool that I can trust, and rely on without having to tinker with it every time.

• An analog refractometer requires quite a bit of tinkering and cleaning for one measurement.
• The Hanna Salinity Checker (what are the other conductivity meters btw?) seems to randomly die on users, require careful calibration (bubbles?), and overall it's not always described as trustworthy in terms of the reported salinity level.
• Digital refractometer seems to be the way to go. Easy to calibrate, most people report good experiences, especially with the Hanna digital refractometer.

One source I checked:
I don't really care very much if the digital readout is not the actual salinity, as long as I can use that number to keep my salinity stable.

Should I use a digital refractometer to check my salinity once every couple of days, and then double check once a month with the tropic marin high precision hydrometer?

Does that sound like a good way to go about checking salinity?

 

[Saltyreef]

Buy one of these and never look back
Then you can "sharpie calibrate" a cheap swing arm hydrometer with it and never have to float it again since its kind of a PITA.

No further calibrations needed for life!

High Precision Hydrometer

Ensure that your equipment is reading correctly and your aquarium is at the right salinity with Tropic Marin's High Precision Hydrometer. Many tank inhabitants are sensitive even to minor changes of the water conditions. Unfortunately as we've all experienced, salinity reading equipment as...

www.bulkreefsupply.com

 

[rob taft]

I use a Milwaukee and Hanna Salinity checker on a regular basis and use my Tropic Marin Hydrometer to ensure accuracy. In my case both the Hanna and Milwaukee register about .75-1.0 higher than the Tropic Marin. Buy an inexpensive 500ML tube to use with the Tropic Marin. Fill it to the 500ML line, insert hydrometer, check salinity, dump water back into tank. Incredibly easy.

 

[blasterman]

Salinity checking is one of those things in this hobby that is beyond ridiculous.

All you are doing is measuring the density of water.

I still use a plastic floating plastic needle Instant Ocean hydrometer. Ive owned several refractometers and the plastic floatie thing is within half a point of the refractometers. Ive long since dropped or lost my refractometers. The plastic floatie thing still works, and its still within half a point of any calibrated refractometer Ive tested it against.

So, explain to me why I need a refractometer. I walk over to my tank, dip it in, tap it to dislodge air bubbles and have my reading in a few seconds and go on with my life. I will long be dead before that plastic needle wheel thingy goes out of calibration which will involve the plastic polymers converting back to oil.

I check my salinity maybe once a month. I dont do water changes so the only thing that affects my salinity is dosing, and after a long while my salinity will hit .026 . At which point a replace a gallon of tank water with fresh and go on with my life .