ceramic magnets?

Joshua1023

New member
I bought a pair of ceramic magnets at Lowe's w/ the intention of using them to mount a MJ1200. They are not coated with anything. Will these rust or cause harm to my reef?
 
I was thinking of coating them with the rubberized coating that you can buy to coat handles of pliers and such. Anyone know anything about that?
 
I would seal them in an acrylic case. Epoxy coat and seal the acrylic up tight. That rubber stuff may leach some chemicals into the tank.
 
Yes, that rubber stuff for tools will degrade over time. At least the HD stuf I had did when I tested it for a couple of months in old tank water.
 
Hey thanks for the info badpacket. That just saved me doing the exact same test.

Hesaias, could you elaborate on the acrylic case? Do you figure on just cutting some thin acrylic to size or do you know of some inexpensive ready-made products.
 
i made a bunch of "frag mags" and used kind of the same "acrylic case" concept i think he is talking about.

What i did was simply tank a piece of acrylic that was a tiny bit thicker than the magnets i was using.....then drill holes in it big enough for the magnet to fit in.

Then i glued (Weld-on #16)two really thin walls of acrylic to each side, and cut the sealed magnets out of the sheet. : )

i then shaped and covered in aragonite mine...but you wouldnt need to do that for your project of course. So different project........but same acrylic "casing" concept.

I tried several different ways before i came up with this one. I also enclosed them in a pvc cap and plug which also was a bulletproof way to seal the magnet from saltwater, and i covered it with epoxy. But i like the acrylic casing method the best becasue it by default sits perfectly flat on your tanks walls

magnetsglued.jpg


preglu.jpg


frragmag.jpg
 
Flyyyguy, not bad. Also, people seem to forget the as we are using magnets the magnet can go on either the inside or outside. Do something similar with a small square of steel and epoxy to ph, and have magnets on the -outside-.

Make sure you ruber band the steel to the ph first and test with magnet you want too use. Sometimes you need a certain amount of steel mass for the magnet to be able to attract depending upon mass of main object.

The nice thing about doing it this way is its cheaper to put to pieces of steel on a side and rear of a powerhead (if you want to change flow direction) without wasting magnets.

Some other sites:

http://forcefieldmagnets.com/catalog/

http://www.wondermagnet.com/viewingfilm.html

http://www.amazingmagnets.com/
 
want a real magnet?

www.eriez.com


I got some of the RE5 magnets these folks produce. they are scary. Im gonna make my own magnet glass cleaner, but I don't know if I wanna use a block ceramic magnet or one of the RE5s I have.
 
hey guys dont know if any of you know this but these sites listed above in this post also carry epoxy coated magnets
 
The epoxy coating they come with isnt even close to durable enough to trust putting a magnet inside it in your tank ; )
 
Yep, the small penny sized coated oned will corrode the acrylic off in a couple of months. Flakes off in big chunks.
 
i actually have a provisional patent on this idea, which I filed about about 2 years ago. I even Approached DR Mac on carrying them, he was interested big time at first, but, like me. he found that the ND high power magnets RUST after while when connected together,

However, I did think of the also the Ceramic magnets, they are weaker and may NOT rust so you can try them. I did some tests but the magnets got knocked off the side, never bothered to see how they compared to the Neodynum magnets, mainly because they were weaker.

I was using the higher powered expoxy coated ND magnets, but unfortunately the higher power ND magnets RUST after awhile, even with the epoxy coating, I even tried the NICKLE coated ones.. did pretty much the same, so I scrapped the idea..

They rust where the magents touch, (some chemical reaction with the salt water eats through the epoxy) but will indeed hold frag rubble bases in place..for a few months, so strong they can lift the rock with them together and wont come apart. ahahha Have to SLIDE them apart to get them apart.

The high powered magnets which are very powerful neodynum magnets, which were coated in epoxy.. but after about 5 mos they rust through. They will hold for awile and the idea does work to hold frags, clams in place.. but they will RUST eventually if you us ND magnets. Not sure again about ceramic, but the ceramic are weaker.

I called my idea "FRAGNETS" I sold them and purchased them from some of the sites listed above.. in bulk.. Just gave up on the idea as novel as it was, not sure rust and the rare EARTH metals are good to leach in the tank when the epoxy wears off., and it will.

Never noticed any ill effects from the rare earth metals in the ND magents on my tank, and I had about 4 frags mounted this way for about 6 mos.

PM me if you want more information about the idea.. I will send links... I dont want to get canned for commercial post. ( I have links for them, but dont sell them anymore even though old site page is still up, but you can see pix though of what I did with them)
 
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Just to get more clarification please... i am still reading up on magnets, but still not sure what would work for me...

I am interested in just glueing one of them straight to the back of a powerhead.

so magnets like this one that is coated in epoxy will flake after a few months?
http://www.kjmagnetics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=DC2E

another one like this coated in plastic...
http://www.kjmagnetics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=DC6PC-BLK

Which one is best to use if it is fully exposed in your tank without doing anything else to them?


Thanks
 
The thing too do is to get some 1/4" or thick acrylic and drill insets into them with a spade bit or something. I've not done it besides thinking of it, however there is a thread on RC recently where someone did. Popped the magnets into the inset, a little epoxt or silicon to fill empty space, and glued another piece of acrylic on the top. Cut them into squares and there you go. I'm wondering if I can do this with my new router, not sure how to control depth or what bit too use though. Do a search, heard it works very well and some of the magnets you can get are patently, absurdly strong. And for only $2-3/ea.
Heck, get some old hard drives and rip out the magnets, or go to Goldmine Electronic and get them for $0.79/ea.
 
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