The Flipper Max Float is a new version of Flipper’s largest algae cleaning magnet that is designed for cleaning tough algaes on some pretty big tanks. Flipper’s magnetic glass cleaners have always enjoyed a small degree of negative buoyancy, sinking slowly to the bottom of the tank. But now with the expiration of the floating algae magnet patent, the Flipper Max Float can benefit from a small degree of buoyant water displacement.
The Flipper Max Float is rated for tanks with glass thickness up to one inch or 25 mm thick but this is a pretty lofty assessment suitable for removing the lightest diatom and thin biofilm growth. For the kind of thick algae and coralline growth that marine aquariums experience, and some freshwater tanks too, you’re looking at a more practical upper limit of 3/4″ thick glass, or around 19mm.
Besides its newfound floating ability, the Flipper Max Float has seen some adjustments to both the wet internal and dry external part of the magnetic pair. The smallest change is to be found on the internal part of the magnet, having its small plastic contact points replaced with small patches of felt that can be used with the Flipper Feeding Kit.
The biggest change however is now to the external dry part of the Flipper Max Float which is now almost twice as thick as before to accomodate an ergonomic handle. If you’ve got a smaller tank, with less pressure to overcome and less area to actually clean, it might take just a few minutes to give the tank a thorough wipe down.
However if you’re cleaning the kind of tank that requires the strength of the Flipper Max Float, it’s probably a larger tank, with much more glass to clean. The much increased size of the external magnet is a very welcome improvement to cleaning large tanks, with a powerful magnet, while greatly reducing the fatigue you might experience, especially if your tank has a peninsular layout, and two panes to clean.
So what do we make of the new Flipper Max Float now that the internal magnet can actually float? As we’ve previously mentioned, the Flipper line of algae magnets have always had a little bit of ‘bounce’ preventing them from plummeting to the bottom of the tank when disconnected from the external pair.
In other algae cleaning magnets that didn’t have any perceptible buoyancy such as the Tunze Care magnet, the addition of floating ability actually increased the gripping force of the magnet since it no longer has to fight the pull of gravity. But since the Flipper Max Float went from being slightly negatively buoyant to slightly positively buoyant, there’s not as much of a ‘performance boost’ but at least it now float all the way to the top of the tank for easy retrieval.
If you’ve already got the Flipper Max, there isn’t as much of a benefit to ‘upgrade’ to the fully floating Flipper Max Float. however if you’ve got a bunch of tanks to clean, or a lot of glass surface to cover, the new larger ergonomic handle is really the biggest improvement and should make cleaning less of a chore.
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