High salinity = sps death?

Reefhaven · Mar 18, 2018

i have been dealing with sps death for a while now and couldn’t figure why. All my parameters are with in range..alk 8.3, cal 468, mag 1500, nitrate 2-5, phosphate .03 but 1.030! I didn’t know until I decided to bring my tank water to my lfs and have them double check. I have been testing out 1.026 with my refractometer this whole time but it seems that my calibration solution is off. Sps tips would start to die and base with go too. Hoping this is the issue to all this death. Otherwise I don’t know what else is causing this.

NY_Caveman · Mar 18, 2018

Ugh. Sorry to hear. Sounds like you have a hold of it at least. You have some nice SPS so I hope some made it.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Mar 18, 2018

I would not assume that the salinity was the problem. Many SPS corals grow fine in the Red Sea, and the average salinity in it is about sg = 1.030.

That said, keeping it at 35 ppt (sg = 1.0264) or so sounds like a better plan.

DiZASTiX · Apr 20, 2018

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
I would not assume that the salinity was the problem. Many SPS corals grow fine in the Red Sea, and the average salinity in it is about sg = 1.030.

That said, keeping it at 35 ppt (sg = 1.0264) or so sounds like a better plan.

I noticed that one of my LFSs keep sg = 1.030, measured with Milwaukee, and calibrated same day. They have some incredible mother colonies the size of bowling balls next to encrusted mounted frags. I'm almost tempted to slowly adjust my salinity to match my fav LFS.

What do you keep yours at, @Randy Holmes-Farley ?