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The reason I asked is to confirm a suspicion. I know from personally checking that all the wholesalers I deal with keep fish at 1.017 - 019 ( usually at the low end ) and corals at 1.022 - 024. Ph always above 8.1 ( easy to maintain with the water turnover in their systems and very sparse feeding)
After a lot of experimentation I found that most fish tolerate only a .002 rise in s.p./24hr easily and without stress. Since lowering my incoming isolation tanks to 1.020 over a year ago I have had 0 parasite problems. Ph may be an additional problem with LFS' water.
On refractometers - A few months ago I had a chance to do a mass test of over 15 plastic meters (seachem and forty fathoms) of various ages. I lined them up on the customers' tank and every one was different! The readings ranged from 1.017 - .026. Actual reading was 1.030 by refractometer. Two of them happened to be mine so I checked them again 2 months later and the discrepency was different so you can't "calibrate" them.
Instead of a plastic s.p. meter write little numbers on a pair of dice and give the a toss - all you have to lose are your animals.
All refractometers are not created equal. - check them before you buy!
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