Magnetic frag disks rusting?

[jammoye2]

I bought some of the Ocean Wonders magnetic frag disks from BRS a few months ago. Since then i have been having STN issues with quite a few of my SPS. Today I removed one of the dead frags mounted to the magnetic disk and scraped off the putty and underneath the surface of the aragonite plug was stained orange. I know there is a magnet embedded inside the plug and I wonder if the orange stain denotes rusting? If so maybe this is the source of the STN? Has anyone else experienced any issues with magnetic frag plugs leaching rust?

 

[KeMo]

I would not use them unless you are sure its a type of algae and not from rust.
Sounds like a badd clue.
I made my own frag racks out of acrylic and use one of the mag cleaners to mount it in the tank.

 

[raynist]

I used epoxy coated magnets and all of my Sps died, I found all of the magnets had rusted. Not sure if that was the reason or not.

 

[Dustin1300]

I would not risk it. Now you have me doubting my frag rack with magnets on the inside....

 

[jammoye2]

Does STN sound like possible symptoms of metal leaching into the tank? most of the SPS involved started losing tissue from the base.

 

[Khoad]

I had an Algea Free magnetic cleaner split and rust badly. I never has any isses with SPS and STN.

 

[tkeracer619]

It depends but in general rust is a bad thing.

I crashed an otherwise perfectly running algae free sps tank due to a rusty magnet that split.

 

[jammoye2]

It depends but in general rust is a bad thing.

I crashed an otherwise perfectly running algae free sps tank due to a rusty magnet that split.

Sorry to hear about that. What were the symptoms while the tank was crashing?

 

[jammoye2]

Update, I removed all eight of my magnetic frag disks and all eight were rusting. I'll see now if my corals recover and if they do then I think I've found the culprit. I'll update the thread once I see what happens.

 

[Dustin1300]

Update, I removed all eight of my magnetic frag disks and all eight were rusting. I'll see now if my corals recover and if they do then I think I've found the culprit. I'll update the thread once I see what happens.

I now will not buy any of the frag magnets...Sounds like too large of a risk. :furious:

 

[T.A.R.]

I did some work with some of those epoxy coated magnets. They scratch very easily and the coating is very thin. I took those epoxy coated magnets and submerged them in a second much thicker coating of epoxy and have them in a test system right now. I will take one out at three months and cut the epoxy off it, one at six months and one at nine months. My guess is every one will look unnafected. Biggest problem is doing this weakens the magnet a lot. So you have to use bigger magnets at a higher cost. I have a buddy that used a cheap acrylic magnetic holder and he had a similar thing happen. He took the thing out of his tank and the magnets were all rusted even though they were encased in acrylic.

I used a liquid epoxy mixture not the putty. I would think the putty might not be enough of a coating. But I never tried it.

 

[Dustin1300]

All this talk has me worried. I have an Eshopps frag rack with magnet holders encased in acryllic. Anyone heard anything of these racks with that particular problem?

http://premiumaquatics.com/store/me..._Code=PA&Product_Code=ES-19105&Category_Code=

 

[jammoye2]

the difference is that those magnets are encased in acryllic whereas the ones I used were encased in aragonite which evidently is porous enough to leach.