• Living stones

  • Richard

Can lava be used as a substrate for live rocks? If anyone has experience, please respond.

Christina9947

no... there will be such a set of chemical elements in the lava!!!

Nicholas5194

There is no substrate for the aquarium (live rocks) and there cannot be one; live rock must be present in full volume, and there is no alternative... Unfortunately...

Noah1632

Lava is quite inert and very porous. I will have to try it alone.

Kimberly3727

Hello! This topic has already been raised on the forum, and I have also expressed my opinion on this matter here: Of course, lava, like any other porous material, will serve as a filter to some extent, but believe me, it will NEVER compare to real live rocks (J.K.) in terms of effectiveness or quality. Why waste your time and, although not a lot, money on purchasing this lava, when you will eventually come to the conclusion that it needs to be replaced with live rocks (J.K.)? Others have already gone down this path more than once...

Wendy

It will settle in about ten years. Don't step on the same rake, better live stones only live stones.

Chelsea567

One of the "sailors" also claims, based on personal experience, that J.K. (live rocks) is sufficient at 30% of the planned amount, with the rest being dead rocks. The colonization takes about a year.

Michael826

You wrote yourself - "The value of live rocks lies in the diverse established symbiosis from bacteria to protozoa." Yes, colonization occurs (the urchins are sitting, the Carolina is growing, the fungi), but the quality of this colonization is only 1%. The solution is to use less live rock (the same 30%) and do without dead rock. You can secure it with titanium wire and almost reach 100% filling with stones in terms of volume. By the way, the basis of live rock is dead corals. I drilled many of them for pins, and everywhere it’s the same - calcium-containing formations.

Jeremy

Interesting discussion about J.K. (living stones) here - I liked Sleepy's opinion.

Gregory9432

Using cement is generally highly undesirable, and non-Portland cement is useless. Over time, cement does react with water and even just with air. I started the topic with the idea of using inert materials like lava, with high porosity, as a source for self-growing living stones. There is no information anywhere about using lava. There is a lot of information about cement. Cement is certainly significantly cheaper, but in the long term, lava is preferable. That's how it seems to me.

Todd8452

Colleagues, as the Americans established a couple of years ago, cement starts to behave poorly after 10 years. Even when purely exposed to air, it undergoes reactions and becomes unstable, releasing harmful substances. The fact that cement stones become less habitable after a few years is confirmed by American research.

Brian7092

As personal experience and the experience of other aquarists show, home reefs live less from the moment of setup to the moment of renovation or dismantling, so ten years is quite enough, and thank you for the information.

Keith7534

I touched on this topic in connection with the thought that live rocks can and should be grown independently, which would help reduce prices and make marine aquaristics more budget-friendly and accessible. This would revitalize trade in this area. We, Slavs, might be able to conquer the whole world with the help of a hammer and some materials.

Anne4851

It is necessary to consider the possibility of using foam concrete, the porosity is insane, just need to choose a good material.

Debra8438

In foam concrete, some chemicals known as "foaming agents" are added for better formation of foam concrete.

Vincent

Maybe polystyrene is better? Actually, "marine aquarium enthusiasts" could conduct long-term tests of different materials, without any extremes, of course.

Kenneth7210

You have every chance to conduct long-term tests of different materials without any extremes. And become the FIRST sailor of this kind.

Lauren

Experiments in marine aquaristics are very expensive.