Lava Rock for base rock?

[dakar]

Having no clue where all this lava rock actually would come from, I have some reservations as to it actually originating from a volcano given the quantity available HD would have to be selling 5-6 whole volcanos a year.

Just curious if anyone here has tried to use the landscaping type of lava rock in a their reef tank.... kinda curious of the results, nice and porous, and should become 'live' pretty quickly, but also curious of the odds of there being some trace amount of copper or other harmful elements that may be present to be leeched into the system.

[peregrinus]

one of my first thanks i did lava rock the corals did not like it. i found out late that the lava rock can leach out bad stuff into the water. use a tufa type rock as a base rock and live rock ontop thats what i do.

[dakar]

That's kinda what I thought.... You know I when I thought about this, your name was the first on my list of folks who would have tried it.
Guess we'd need someone with one of those cool gadgets like they show on CSI, some sort of mass spectrometer to figure out what it's composition truly is. Too bad, we've got half a dozen bags or so just sitting.

Angel and I have an excursion planned this weekend to go rock hopping around on the larger dam's spillways near us... maybe a couple chunks with lots of character that magically gets relocated...to a pot of boiling water, a good scrubbing, and then to a curing tank to see what turns up.

Hope the *weather guessers* are wrong, they're calling for single digit temps......

[Reptoreef]

Most lava rock is loaded with phosphates.

[peregrinus]

yeah i still have a whole bunch that i collected from promatory point out here in utah. it has really cool shapes but i think it was leaching out bad stuff. i could not keep xeina when i used it.

[davejnz]

I will never use land based rock again for a reef tank,too many problems with algae issues/leaching down the road.Better off just gettin well cured(cooked in darkness) LR and using PVC supports to elevate it off the bottom.I feel most reef tanks these days have too much LR in them which leads to detritus buildup,dead spots/poor circulation and eventually algae problems.

[Reptoreef]

Yep... totally agreed.

[dakar]

Let's put a twist on this....and turn this into a fulll blown rock discussion.

Now I don't know an exact percentage but it's got to be quite high by now..but a lot of the LR we buy today has been farmed, someone leases big patch of ocean floor and dumps barges full of land rock down there and just lets it set until time to be harvested a few years later. Aside from the fact they are dealing with a lot more water... what would really be the difference between that and doing the same in a closed system? The rock I'm looking at is basically Lace Rock that has been setting in fresh water in a spillway for 50 years or so. I pruchased about 50 lbs of this type of rock, it's real origin is completely unknown, from an LFS to start the big tank here and seeded it with LR/LS and so far it's doing quite well with no apparent ill effects, granted it's only been wet for a few months now but rapidly coming full of life. It's very poruous and light weight, more like desert rock aka compressed sand, bit for $1.50ish a pound how can you go wrong. (BTW 50 pound filled three shopping bags and cost me less than a C note).

[Reef_Angel]

This rock that Dakar and I were thinking of was brought in and put all the way arounnd the entire lake as it is man made. It really resembles the lace rock that we purchased from the LFS in weight and texture. Nothing ever seems to grow on it if you pull the rock that that is built up high more for landscaping and runoff purposes. If you were to throw a chunck down hard against the other rocks, it would break in two. That's where I got the idea from. When we go boating in the summer, I always admire the rock, it's texture and color. We'll get some picture of it when we get out there and post them also and get more of your opinions to. It sure is nice having so many minds working together. What would any of us do without all of you? :) 7 more days till Christmas....is your shopping all done? We have to go today some more. Wish us luck! Ho Ho Ho!!

[davejnz]

alot of FL aquacultured is landbased aragonite type rock.It cures in the ocean and all the sponges/algae/boring organisms populate it and this coupled with it being out in the Gulf for 5yrs really helps cure it and remove some of those nasty compounds.That said,all of the FL gulf LR that i've ever bought eventually had algae issues later on.I think if your rock has cured for 50yrs in frshwater,alot of the nasty compunds should be removed.Like to see some pics of it after it populates

[peregrinus]

i do the same thing for the utah rock put it on a sump or refug and just let it stew for a while. in fact the tank the i just started i did this very same process i had corals in it with in a few days of setting it up.

[pfloyd19732003]

Hello,

i was thinking about adding some lava rock to my tank, but i got talked out of it. I chose lace instead, coralline grows a lot faster on it and also has the shap for good surface area that a SPS coral can grow on to. I mean that its mostly flat or round and doesnt have all the nooks and crannies that a peice of fiji rock would have

peace

[Reefmaniac1]

Lava rock can be FULL of phosphates. So my suggestion would be to avoid using it.

[dakar]

No worries here, the notion was quickly abandoned it was more out of curiosity than anything else.

[JustDavidP]

I've used both lava rock and lace rock before with miserable results. I had bad algae outbreaks both times. Upon removal of the rock ..viola! Gone.

As far as aquaculturing rock, I'm pretty sure that the farmers are using land based rock that was actually "water rock" years ago and left dry by receding waters, oceans, glaciers etc. Other than that, they are actually making the rock in molds, using only trusted materials.

Dave