We’re building an Aquaponic system in Mexico where Red Tezontle is readily available. It is a porous, highly oxidized, volcanic rock used extensively in construction in Mexico. It is usually reddish in color due to iron oxide.
Has anyone used this with success in flood and drain media bed?
Thanks,
Colin
1 Like
Sorry, never heard of it 
1 Like
it looks very much like scoria that is readily available in Victoria Australia whereby I grew greenhouse tomatoes in 10litre pots for 9 years in the late 80’s.
it needs to be fully flushed with fresh water before use and our specification back then was scoria of 5 - 8mm plus some fines for water retention but this was a dripper fed system.
I heard of some growers using it as a bit of a capillary matting in the early NFT systems so cannot see why it would not work in a flood and drain system.
do a small trial first before commiting to larger system
n.b. it was difficult to remove scoria from root systems.
4 Likes
I think that volcanic rock works well for microorganisms and plants as well. It provides more space(poroua) for microorganisms to reside and plants can utilize the iron ions for growth with no extra cost to buy the chelated irons (DTPA). In aquaponics, we have to put the DTPA iron regularly.
It looks good for grow bed and fish tank as well. You may try in advance as other heavy metals may come out of the Red Tezontle.
Sam ([email protected])
4 Likes
Aloha, I used red volcanic cinder for a bell-siphon bio-filter and media beds at Kohala High School Aquaculture Program.
3 Likes