Pasir Malang / Lava Rock explained

Lately I've been asked many times about using pasir malang or Lava rock as substrate. I've heard of this 20 years ago and I've tried that too as you can see from my old picture.

been there done that

Firstly lemme explain what is Pasir malang, they are Lava Rock or Volcanic rock. Very porous in nature, an excellent filter media. Couple with an ion negative charged acts like a magnet to contaminations such as heavy metal and so on.

Now lets get back to the question, is lava rock a good choice as a substrate? Is it also advisable to use sera siporax as substrate? this will saved us plenty on canister filtration set up. Right? wrong! why do canister, trickle or any sort of filtration designed in such a way that plenty of oxygen supply are pumped onto the media? Because beneficial bacteria needs a lot of oxygen to operate or they will die if inadequate O2 is available.

What happen to places with low oxygen supply? these are the black site or black area that spawn bad bacteria. This is why we try our best to avoid dead spots with low O2 supply.

You will then ask what about sand? isn't sand promoting dead spots? well if you're keeping deep sand bed, anything 6" - 10" deep you're asking for trouble. Because deep sand bed will promote dead spot that brew nasty bacterias.

And again you will ask; how can I compare a 2 inch deep lava rock sand with a 6inch deep sand bed? remember I mentioned about lava rock as a porous material, porous media has much more surface area as compared to a solid media like sand. They have at least 50X more surface area compared to solid gravel. So what do you think you'll be brewing in there?

My previous experience using lava rock as a substrate, first year was good, water always stayed crystal clear. 2nd year my fish for out of no reason develop swollen eyes, fungus and dropsy. These are all indication of bad water.

Another disadvantage is the sharp edges of lava rock, if your fish are spooked or when you are trying to catch your fish it can get nasty cuts, so beware.

These are just simple science.

If in the case you absolutely die die must use pasir malang, then my advised is use a very thin layer, ironically pasir malang in english also means bad luck sand *lol* I wonder if this is the reason it was named so, fish dying for no reason?

Fungus infection

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