PSA: calibrate your refractometers

[TheCheat]

Just a friendly Public Service Announcement to remind everybody to calibrate their refractometers regularly.

I was not in the habit of doing this, and it caused me some problems. Hopefully this little notice will save somebody else some unwanted problems.

Have a great weekend.
~B

 

[Shooter7]

Interesting conversation about this topic from the reef discussion forum:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=967301&highlight=refractometer

 

[DrBDC]

Don't calibrate with ro/di either. Use a salinity standard of 1.026. FWIW the pinpoint salinity meter calibration fluid is correct for refractometers also. When I calibrated with ro/di my rhs-10atc (or something like that) was correct from the factory already. But then after getting a salinity meter I found it was running .002 too high. So I thought I was at 1.026 but really at 1.024. Now did that matter, not much and some run at that hyposalinity anyway. Consistency is more important but I'm a little anal and would like to have it where I think it is.