My Hydrometer Broke :(

[rhysiboy]

hey all i have terible news.... my instant ocean thermometer is broken. It all began when i was cleaning it as i do every week with sitting it in lemon juice for 5 minutes. I soon washed it out and put water in and put the hydrometer on my window sill. To my horror when i returned i found my hydrometer had been knowcked of the side and onto the hard work surface and the little wait inside the arm had fallen out so its knackred. my question is really is how long can i put off buying one its just that i really really cant afford £15 for a new one so would it be ok to just keep my water level topped up and hope for the best ? (also my tank only has 2 hermits a snail and live rock in so nothing that can go disasterously wrong)

 

[tmreynolds]

hey all i have terible news.... my instant ocean thermometer is broken. It all began when i was cleaning it as i do every week with sitting it in lemon juice for 5 minutes. I soon washed it out and put water in and put the hydrometer on my window sill. To my horror when i returned i found my hydrometer had been knowcked of the side and onto the hard work surface and the little wait inside the arm had fallen out so its knackred. my question is really is how long can i put off buying one its just that i really really cant afford £15 for a new one so would it be ok to just keep my water level topped up and hope for the best ? (also my tank only has 2 hermits a snail and live rock in so nothing that can go disasterously wrong)

£15 for a hydrometer! You can buy a refractometer for only a bit more. TBH I'd get a refractometer, I used to use a hydrometer but it wasn't accurate enough. I bought the refractometer off eBay

 

[SkiFletch]

What was the last sg reading you had? And how good a feel do you have for your water changes? Also, will you have at least a weekly opportunity to go to the LFS for a sample check?

 

[rhysiboy]

the last reading i had was 1.024 / 1.025 andi know the exact water level so in theory if i can keep it topped up that muchi shouldnt have much problme rght? and also with water cahnge for the past 7 weeks ive always added 275 g of TMC salt into 9 litres of water giving me a salinity of 32 or 33 and a sg of 1.024/ 1.024. Also im looking into the refractometers on ebay

 

[SkiFletch]

Yeah, you can get away with that, just really be careful. Without knowing the sg you can really damage things. I still say get your LFS to verify as frequent as possible