Stone
Well-Known Member
In my quest to find the perfect substrate rollhappy I'm trying 100% lava rock (scoria) with some species. Has anyone tried it long-term? How did you go?
I grow cochlohybrids in it sins 2007 and I have only had to repot some of them ones.
I also have Dendrobium eximium, Dendrochilum glumaceum and a couple of other things in it for several years.
It's essential to get rid of the dusty and smal stuff, so I always put it tru a siv.
Sorry about my bad english.
With lava you don't really know what minerals it is made up of since it is a random mixture. It may contain toxic amounts of certain chemicals that may have some effect on plants. Maybe or maybe not the point is lava is not like leca in that it in a known mineral and then "baked".
Lava may leach out undesirable minerals.
If you use lava as a media you will not be able to know exactly what nutrients your plants are actually getting.
Commonly it's not 'fresh' lava you get. The lava you can buy has been washed by rain for a few hundred/thousand of years... And you don't now either what is leached out when you use bark.
If you want absolute control of the media and the chemicals, you must use an 100% inert material.
I would suggest (depending on how long you want to kill on this project)leave a bunch of this lava soaking in your water of choice, out in the sun. If you get algae growing in it (or mosquitoes breeding in it), it's probably not leaching anything bad.
Thats a very good tip:clap:
Despite potential source issues, it get used ( or used to get used a lot) for aquarium filtration. That would have provided a more sensitive test than plants.
Decades ago they didn't have the nutrient data available now. As I said It is used commercially for hydroponics so it DOES work. You just need to get the watereing and feeding right.(which may not be so easy?)History lesson......Lava was tried decades ago, it is not unknown and if it was a great media for orchids we would never have used bark.
How much Potassium leaches from lava?
TONS!!
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