Reef nutrition

What's your most indespensible tool for tank cleaning ?

This little scrap piece of acrylic hallow tubing that I super glued a cut piece of scrubber tool onto. No one makes something as small as I needed it to get between the rocks and glass. Works amazing and cost me like a dollar.

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Patent Pending ;)
 
My 15 inch scraper.
Size matters.
Longer and it bumps everything in the tank, plus you lose leverage.
Shorter and my shirt gets wet.
Took a while to find the right one. Most are 12 or 24 in.
 
My Tiger Shark Magnetic cleaner. Does 99% of the work. I have yet to break out a razor blade on this tank. I felt it was WAY too expensive when I bought it, but had read some really good reviews. Definately worth the price.
 
I like the Dobie sponge, the material is the same thing as the Mighty Magnet's "algae cutter" sock at a fraction of the price. Of course I only use this due to it being acrylic. Ideally I'd say get a glass tank and then go apeshit with a razor blade, say what you will about the clarity of acrylic vs glass, a freshly cleaned glass tank is orders of magnitude clearly than an acrylic tank with less than a day of diatom growth on it.
 
I have a 5 inch piece of 1/2" diameter PVC, I cut a slit in it on one side, at an angle and cram a single sided razor blade in there. I need it short so I can control it and get it between glass and rocks. Works awesome, but I gotta stick my arm in the tank to use it.
 
Razor blades scare me, even w/ glass as I've found that I caused small scratches if i'm not careful. For that reason I use the Kent Scraper- the metal blade for the glass & plastic blade for starphire. Maybe metal also if fine for starphire but I find plastic works well enough.
As far as in tank cleaners, every few weeks I whip out the mighty magnet and it really gets the glass clean, worth the extra $$$ to get a big magnet cleaner- lessens the frequency of having to put my hand inside the tank to scrape the glass clean.
 
For those with glass tanks, check out the easyblade as I mentioned before. Best $15 you will spend!

No need to reach into your tank to scrape algae.
 
There are a couple versions of the Magic Eraser. The "Orginal" and "Extra Power" chemical free. If the pad is plain white with no layers then it's probably the chemical free but check carefully. If it has a blue or green layer sandwiched between white layers then it is probably the chemicals added version. From the boxes I looked at on Amazon it seemed pretty easy to tell which one's have the chemicals.

I was just using a Magic Eraser an hour ago cleaning the glass in my tank! I still love it. Each one lasts me a couple of months.
 
I'll have to try that. I use them in my house so have some. I just always thought they had chemicals. The Dobie sponge is OK but doesn't always do it. I have starphire and would probably cry if I scratch it.
 
The magic eraser is an abrasive plastic (not quite a plastic actually, but close) and won't scratch glass. I have been using it on a piece of acrylic divider I have in my frag tang as well and it isn't noticeably scratching that either. I would be more careful with an acrylic tank--the divider is going to be removed when I upgrade so I am content to use it for experimentation and so far, so good.
 
I'll try it next weekend. Just spend all day today cleaning and replacing stuff from yesterday's swap. I'm past done for the day. Thanks for the idea!
 
zeroinverse said:
The easy blade!

You basically superglue an attachment to your magfloat and put in a blade whenever you need to scrap your glass surface. It works amazing! And it only costs like $13 with one blade and you can buy spare blades at $13 for like 10.

http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/easy-blade-algae-scraper.html
Click to expand...
+1 this tool is the absolute best tool I have used in my 40 + years of keeping aquariums. My arm does not get wet or tired. My 5 year old can do it!
 
Also ... it's a big assumption that we all clean our tanks. Mine is a wall of algae.

I'll check out the ez scraper thing and the magic eraser. My razor scraper works awesome on the built up corraline, but you gotta stick your arm in there. That's not going to work with Wifebane (180)
 
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