Magnetically attractive black sand

[gobyvin]

Is this a big problem? My wife’s school reef has sea floor special mixed with this stuff that was donated as a running reef substrate. Animals seem pretty good and have been. It stuck to a magnet mount for a powerhead. Thanks in advance to anyone with knowledge of this. It looks like a Caribsea product, but I can’t be sure, didn’t buy it.

 

[Jbissell1289]

Curious to know the answer to this! Lol

 

[mvallee]

not much to offer other than I ran same kind of sand in my freshwater tank for a couple years, never caused an issue for the inhabitants but was a real pain as it stuck to anything with a magnet.

Ended up getting some on the part of the scraper that goes on the outside of the tank and before I realized it put a couple nice scratches in the tank. I was pretty upset and probably the only person that has scraper scratches on the outside of their tank

 

[scavdog]

I have heard about this substrate. It's volcanic in origin. Lots of threads on it. I'd personally use straight aragonite.

Hawaiian Black Sand...Yes or No?

Thoughts about using Hawaiian Black Sand. Getting ready to upgrade my 75 to a 180 and was looking for something different. Are there any Pro's/Con's?

www.reef2reef.com

 

[this is me]

It's likely this stuff. And it's the iron that is sticking to the magnet.
I personally wouldn't use it for the simple fact that you'll scratch your tank pretty good.
I don't exactly recall but I think it also stick to the metal blade that I was using to clean my planted tank when I had one.

 

[CrypticLifeStyle]

Hmmm, I never had eco stick to a magnet before.

My initial thought was blasting media, I've had that black diamond blasting media from tractor supply stick before.

Take a picture for us.

 

[gobyvin]

 

[gobyvin]

There it is. I will try to take a better photo tomorrow. Same grain size as Seafloor Special Grade, I had added 40 lbs to the mix, and it is the same size. I have another reef with Caribsea’s Hawaiian Volcanic mix. That does not stick to magnets. I run a planted FW with Seachem black Flourite. This looks like it might be it. There are fines in the mix like the Flourite has. Would this be really bad in a reef? I know it is high in iron, and that can encourage algae.

 

[Greg Hiller]

I personally would not use it. I dose a lot of trace elements to my tank, but I KNOW what and how much I'm dosing when I do so. Having a lot of a substrate around with metals would be very dangerous in a reef system. Some animals might not have a problems, but delicate inverts might. I'm not so worried about the iron content, but if there is iron there are likely LOTS of other metals which might be much more problematic.