at work today i met a couple of guys working for an oil company on an interesting technology to extract oil from algae. i wont go into specifics as i'm not too sure how much they might want me to. from that conversation though we talked a bit about algae and aquariums and one of them mentioned that magnets could be used to kill algae. one of them said (forgive my explanation as i'm sure i'm butchering it) that a magnet would ionize the water molecules. in doing so it would kill algae and/or bacteria in some way. i asked if it had to be an electromagnet and one of them said no....just any good quality magnet...even a small one at that tossed into the tank would do. i then asked if it would kill beneficial bacteria as well and it was unknown but they said possibly. so i wonder if anyone is familiar with this principle and/or ever experimented with it?