Montmorillonite clay granular vs diatomaceous earth

substratum

Shohin
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It does not go soft for me. But as coh points out, I am in a warm climate (freaking hot right now actually!) where we don't get much freeze-thaw. And I repot fairly often, usually no longer than every two years. As a side note, I use STS as a substrate ion my planted aquaria too, and it does not degrade in tanks that have been set up for years.
Thank you. I'm in 8b, so my experience wouldn't be materially different with respect to freezing.
 

sparklemotion

Shohin
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Complete vitrification seals the particle so it won't absorb water. Like glazing a pot in a kiln. The particles can be made quicker or slower drying based on the application. A gradient of vitrification can be achieved by varying the kiln temperature.

It seems to be that if the above is true, the below is demonstratively false:

I would not make much out of it. Turface is completely vitrified so is more like non-porous ceramic.

A "completely vitrified" product wouldn't absorb water, right?
 

coh

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Turface definitely absorbs water. Ever take dry turface and dump water on it? You can hear the hissing as water is absorbed. Well, I guess I should say that I assume what I'm hearing is the water being absorbed and air being displaced...

Some claim that the pore size is so small that turface is reluctant to release water once it has been absorbed. I don't know how true that is, but I know people who've grown trees in nearly 100% turface for decades and the trees look great.
 

SU2

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On what metric? Water stuff or ion stuff? These components all have different water holding and offloading capacities, together with the ion exchange differences for holding ferts. Other stuff too like how they breakdown over time. Hope you got some. Good to experiment with them and see how they work. Different with different climates, waters and plants.

On basically all metrics we'd care for, I'm getting the impression its CEC and Water-Hold-Capacity are somewhere in-between DE and scoria, I use the two of those in-conjunction w/ each other as I find them a good match (scoria/perlite alone have too-low CEC and WHC, the DE has too-much WHC, so mixing them all has been my go-to),
 

Aiki_Joker

Shohin
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It seems to be that if the above is true, the below is demonstratively false:



A "completely vitrified" product wouldn't absorb water, right?

Neither would non-porous ceramic, some non-porous ceramics are doped so they can adsorb compounds (like water) in granular form. Adsorbtion is a surface interaction though. Its not absorbing the compound into the granule. We use these in indsustrial ion exchange columns to pull certain compounds out and easily extract/purify them. Absorbtion into the granule itself would not be possible if completely vitrified.
 
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