madasafish
Aquarium Advice Addict
Hi all,
I'm sure most of you know that the reason Fluorite and Fluorite red are so red is that they have a certain amount of iron in them. Well, this clay tuns out to be a lot more iron-rich than I thought.....
Today I was using my Hagen magnet glass cleaner (((used to hate them, love them now. Can so quickly get rid of that nasty photosynthetic algae!))) and I happened to move it too quickly. It dropped to my tank's bottom. I reached to pick it up and brought about 30 pieces of fluorite up with it. I was a little puzzled at first, and thought that these pieces were caught in the fibers of the felt. NOT SO!! They were completely magnetically stuck to the magnet. It was incredible. They were hard to remove--obviously they were truly Iron-rich. It was as if my substrate consisted of iron shavings! And here I was, worried that the plants were sucking the iron out of the substrate lickity-split!!
Just thought the plant and chemistry/physics/geology nuts out there might get a kick out of this! I sure did!!!
I'm sure most of you know that the reason Fluorite and Fluorite red are so red is that they have a certain amount of iron in them. Well, this clay tuns out to be a lot more iron-rich than I thought.....
Today I was using my Hagen magnet glass cleaner (((used to hate them, love them now. Can so quickly get rid of that nasty photosynthetic algae!))) and I happened to move it too quickly. It dropped to my tank's bottom. I reached to pick it up and brought about 30 pieces of fluorite up with it. I was a little puzzled at first, and thought that these pieces were caught in the fibers of the felt. NOT SO!! They were completely magnetically stuck to the magnet. It was incredible. They were hard to remove--obviously they were truly Iron-rich. It was as if my substrate consisted of iron shavings! And here I was, worried that the plants were sucking the iron out of the substrate lickity-split!!
Just thought the plant and chemistry/physics/geology nuts out there might get a kick out of this! I sure did!!!