Do I need a refractometer?

So like any other person getting in to the hobby and trying to save a buck I bought a swing arm hydrometer even after reading about how inaccurate they were. I've been using it for well over a year and have struggled with quite a few different corals, they would be beautiful when I received them/put them in my tank, then within a few days they would start going downhill. I've lost quite a few corals and had finally decided it must have been due to my tank being young, but I see others having success with tanks younger than mine. I started buying test kits to try and figure out what was wrong why my corals wouldn't grow... nothing seemed to make sense. I was having troubles keeping corals alive that everyone claimed were easy corals that grew like weeds...



Finally I bought a refractometer and calibration fluid and tested my water to find that instead of being 1.024 that I thought I was, I was actually 1.030. So I slowly started bring my s.g. down day by day, and now that I've hit 1.025 I have seen an explosion in growth in my corals! My kenya tree is actually opening up and standing up tall, full polyp extension, my green star polyps are spreading noticeably faster, my xenia seems like it doubles in size every couple of days, and last night I noticed that my candy cane coral that I thought died months ago has tissue starting to open up again!



So if you are asking if you need a refractometer the answer is yes! It only cost me about $30 on amazon, I think I paid $15 for the worthless swing arm hydrometer... just buy the refractometer and you'll be happier!