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How safe is lava rock


BlueLineAquaticsSC
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My dad is in town and wanted to go somewhere I’ve never ventured, a saltwater store. He was asking questions about live rock and wanted to know if he could use lava rock. The owner said it’s fine for fish only set ups but will kill coral and inverts, due to it having a lot of metals. I’ve used and seen lava rock with neocardinia before, I’d there any truth to what he said or is it maybe specific to saltwater?

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I have crushed lava rock as a filler on the backside of my tank below aquasoil and I have shrimp and mystery/nerite snails. Haven't seen any negative affects so far but the tank is fairly new.

On the flipaquatics side the following is stated: "Lava rock in general is one of the best rocks to use in a shrimp tank. Lava rock is extremely porous which provides tons of surface area to grow biofilm and beneficial bacteria. Lava rock  will create natural feeding grounds for shrimp and especially baby shrimp. "

So I don't think it would harm any shrimp tbh. I have personally never heard someone having issues with that in freshwater tank. But that surely does not mean someone will never face any problems ofcourse.

However, I made some googling and it seems lava rocks are not the best for reef tanks it seems. Potentially having high metal/mineral content, sharp structure for delicate corals and not ideal location to grow corals on it seems. Also they may home bacteria due to their structure, and I guess this may also be something negative in reef tanks? It also seems impossible to clean them if needed/wanted. I have no personal knowledge of saltwater/reef tanks really. But better safe than sorry I bet.

 

Edited by Lennie
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**** I am not a geologist!  I have a rudimentary understanding of rocks.  And I am just beginning to do marine tanks.  This might be a combination where I know just enough to be dangerous!  You, reader, have been warned...  ****

So, I find that reefers are super, super careful about anything they do.  They do not like to use anything that has not been shown through thousands of successful folks to work already.  I mean there are those who are still debating whether LED lighting grows corals!  They are so conservative that their default answer to anything new is: "it won't work".  Or that it won't work with corals at the very least.  I'm never quite so sure. 

That said, there are possible reasons why this person may have said this.

  1. Corals are sensitive.  I was just over at Bulk Reef Supply this week, and the 160 was looking rough with lots of coral die off.  The culprit?  High heavy metals.  The only source they could find?  A bread bag tie that dropped into the water. Yikes!
  2. Some lava rocks, like those from Hawai'i can have a lot of olivine in the rock.  This mineral tends to break down easily, and could release a lot of iron into a tank if there was a bunch of it.  Maybe.
  3. In general, igneous rocks may contain different compounds in them depending on their source, making them variable and thus introducing uncertainties in a sensitive aquarium (I mean there are "lava rock" - scoria - sources with zeolites in them!).  Meaning some might work and other not.  For why this is an issue, see my above comments about reefers conservative approach to their aquariums.

In short, it could work with corals.  I mean the reefs around all of the Pacific islands must have started on Lava bases, right?!  If it was a small tank, I would try it in that case because if something went wrong, you could pull the rocks quickly.  Still, I would proceed cautiously.  I might try it, start with fish, test, if all is okay then add less sensitive corals, test, and go from there.  If it's a big tank, enough to where removing the rockscape would be onerous, I would shy away from it.  Out laziness. 

Good luck!

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As someone who has kept a reef tank before, and still have a small fish only SW tank, I can attest that what @OnlyGenusCapsis saying about reef keeping people is true. Now, a lot of metals can be very detrimental to corals and other invertebrates, I  know of people who won't buy a used tank unless they have seen it up and running as a reef, because they are afraid it may have had some kind of medication used in it that could kill their corals. There was a LFS not far from me that started having problems with one of their gorgeous display tanks, and here, someone had dropped a penny into the overflow. Unfortunately, they lost several very large coral colonies because of it. 

Another thing with reef tanks is keeping excess nutrients in check, and with lava rock, that can be more difficult with all the small holes and nooks and crannies. 

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On 2/17/2023 at 2:53 PM, BlueLineAquaticsSC said:

fish that cost $45,000 a piece and dime size frags for over $1000

Wow, those seem like high prices!  I mean I saw a 4 ft black-tipped reef shark for sale when I was in Chicago last time for like 2 grand.  Can you imagine someone walking through the door and being like "I'll take it!  Bag it up for me!".  I wouldn't want to be the employee on shift that day!  Not least because if someone is in the market for a black-tipped reef shark, they might be a Bond villain...

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On 2/18/2023 at 9:15 AM, OnlyGenusCaps said:

Wow, those seem like high prices!  I mean I saw a 4 ft black-tipped reef shark for sale when I was in Chicago last time for like 2 grand.  Can you imagine someone walking through the door and being like "I'll take it!  Bag it up for me!".  I wouldn't want to be the employee on shift that day!  Not least because if someone is in the market for a black-tipped reef shark, they might be a Bond villain...

Ya, apparently it was some rare piebald tang mutation. I wonder how the catch out a 4th shark, fishing pole?

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As someone who has recently ventured over to the reefer forums for some insight and talked to reefers irl. They are wildly cautious as @OnlyGenusCaps said. 
 

When asked how long a tank should be setup before introducing clown fish someone said years. That is not a timeline feasible by most. I also wanted to see if I could reuse the canister filter for the future tank. That was met with a “if you want to clean it every day.” Live rock is the live in filter though, surely your tank isn’t building THAT much organic waste. 
 

I don’t know how much this caution is helpful. And I don’t see how lava rock could be bad in either freshwater or saltwater for those reasons. Some lava rock however have tiny tiny holes that could trap organic wastes and slowly let it out thus polluting the water. That’s the only thing I could see happening.

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On 2/17/2023 at 5:44 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

You can do the fizz test (add a drop of nitrate bottle #1 from the API test kit, and if it fizzes, it can leach things into the water

What!? I've never heard this. Interesting.....

One thing to keep in mind that salt might also just be slightly more abrasive.

The ocean definitely has lava rock. It definitely has coral. I would keep in mind that we generally know and accept what is in coral while lava rock can be inconsistent but is generally rules as inert. Maybe black rock can release particles differently than red. Maybe red has more iron.

I'm willing to bet there is a way to find out the composition of each, but I also would argue that a lot of saltwater people tend to stick to what everyone else does. Generally they'd be used to having coral or "saltwater rock".

https://volcano.oregonstate.edu/faq/what-lava-made

Just like everything, if you have sensitive species use the most safe stuff you can.  If you have more forgiving species, it's probably fine, but you won't know until it's been tested and verified.

 

Edited by nabokovfan87
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