It seems hydrogen peroxide works as well to clean lava rocks... seems like it would be less toxic if you didn't rinse thoroughly enough after the initial soak.

Quote Originally Posted by skunkydelight
Hey Silver, welcome to Hydro...I think you are mis-understanding the concept of the DWC bucket. You want to use lava rock or hydrotone in your netpots as vermiculite and perlite will just fall through into your buckets = no good. If you want to use Vermiculite and Perlite, that would be more of a soillessgrow, which you can do in normal soil pots. Lava rocks can be purchased at Home Depot or Lowes or any other home improvement store, just make sure you wash them off very good with a hydrogen peroxide solution of 1-10 before you use them. Hydrotone can be bought from any growstore. Wash it off before use as well. The good thing about these two mediums is they don't effect the PH at all, which means there is no guess work to get your nutes right. Let me know if you have any other questions. A lot of questions can be answered and should be known before you start on your jouney into DWC. Read my entire threads and you should be good to go....
-sD
I think an over night soak should be plenty sufficient.
good luck:thumbsup:
MaryjaneMenehune Reviewed by MaryjaneMenehune on . Can you use red lava yard-rocks for grow medium ? Iā??ve heard people mention ā??lava rocksā?? as a grow medium, instead of Hydroton. Are they talking about special lava-rocks sold at a grow store, or the red lava-type rocks used for landscaping, that people use in their front yard in place of grass ? The yard kind is probably very cheap compared to Hydroton (they probably sell it by the cubic yard like soil). What I wonder is: 1) does it release minerals into the solution that would raise/lower the pH ? and 2) does the rock being red Rating: 5