Has anyone ever used lava rock as a grow media in their aquaponics system grow beds? The price is right and I have done some research online and people have had some good results. Kind of like a natural growstone. Please share your input and thoughts. Thanks Anson
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worked well for me- i'd suggest to filter out the solids however or you will fill those porous spaces with poop rather quickly. If you filter really well you can go to a much finer size and get a lot of surface area for your bacteria to grow, but then you may get dead spots in the root base- which can be eliminated with air stones during the flood cycle. good luck.
I have. It's very rough on your hands and hard to transplant into and out of because of the roughness of the rock. It's also much heavier than hydroton. I much prefer hydroton.
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go with screened pea gravel. its the cheapest. lasts forever. ok on the hands.
what about floating rafts then. Any media is going to add weight.
some softer lava can generate a lot of particulate, and be overall very sharp. It does have a lot of surface area though.
Check out expanded shale and 3/8th river rock (pea gravel)
worked well for me- i'd suggest to filter out the solids however or you will fill those porous spaces with poop rather quickly. If you filter really well you can go to a much finer size and get a lot of surface area for your bacteria to grow, but then you may get dead spots in the root base- which can be eliminated with air stones during the flood cycle. good luck.
I am setting up a system with 1" screened lava using both a swirl filter and a bio-filter, so i hope I'l have the poop problem covered.
I don't understand what you mean by "may get dead spots in the root base", could you elaborate please?
I have. It's very rough on your hands and hard to transplant into and out of because of the roughness of the rock. It's also much heavier than hydroton. I much prefer hydroton.