[somewhatshocked]

I want to thank whoever posted the idea of using a small and inexpensive "rare earth" magnet to pull out aquasoil balls from a portion of the tank that is open sand.

It works great. I had a bunch of these cheap magnets and just dragged one across my sand "beach" today when I did my water change. Remarkably the small round aquasoil balls cling to the magnet easily so that I can pull them out to return to a tidy stretch of sand. Next I will tie one to a string to make it even easier.

I assume that the aquasoil has iron in it...

Are you using it to pick up actual Aqua Soil - the ADA brand - or some other type of dirt/clay-based substrate? Aquasoil is sometimes used as a generic term and causes a ton of confusion for newcomers.

 

[somewhatshocked]

Yes. Way!

My guess is that it depends on the iron content. Today I tied a string to one of my magnets and did a bit of trolling for the unappreciated efforts of my cories and it works so well.

It did also pull out some gravel bits but I just dropped them back in.

Do you happen to have any other brands/varieties of substrate on-hand to test?

Seems like a cool idea for someone out there to test and put in a thread.

 

[somewhatshocked]

I have Seachem Fluorite in my tank also but it is beneath the Stratum and has not made it up to the "the beach" for me to test. I do not have any left over either.

This thread seems like a good place to continue with testing other brands?

Here is a link to the kind of magnet I used. The hole made it easy to put some string through.

I've got a bunch of suitable magnets. Guess I just need to suck it up and do it, as I do have a couple dozen brands of clay/soil-based substrates like that. May take a while or have to wait until I move but will definitely test some out.