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PonicDan
10-28-2012, 03:32 PM
Anyone have a source for hydroton or hydrocorn? I'm having challenges locating enough. I heard the major manufacturer of hydroton is no longer making it. I'd rather not use pea gravel due to the weight.

danksnax
10-28-2012, 04:39 PM
Going into the local hydroponics store the other day looking for a growing medium, I snagged the last two bags of hydroton that was in stock and the owner told me that the mine in Germany had ran dry, which is ashame because this is my first experience with the medium and hope it wont be my last.
As to where to get more a very quick google search for hydroton led me to some deals on the very first link.

urbanfarmer
10-28-2012, 04:56 PM
Going into the local hydroponics store the other day looking for a growing medium, I snagged the last two bags of hydroton that was in stock and the owner told me that the mine in Germany had ran dry, which is ashame because this is my first experience with the medium and hope it wont be my last.
As to where to get more a very quick google search for hydroton led me to some deals on the very first link.

:lol: :lol: :lol: Hydroton is manufactured in a factory not mined out of the ground. :lol: :lol: :lol: Holy s**t, I can't stop laughing!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:

PonicDan
10-28-2012, 05:00 PM
Urbanfarmer......they bake the stuff in a factory but the clay they use comes from a mine. I've read much about it, apparently they only use a certain type of clay. I guess it's the mineral content er summptin.

David - WI
10-28-2012, 05:05 PM
I finally gave up trying to find full pallets of "Hydroton" brand... so I bought Gold Label "Hydro Korrels" which appear to be almost the same; maybe less "uniform" but not bad.

There was a kiln here making LECA (similar to hydroton) but it's also closed: http://www.minergy.com/technology/light ... egate-lwa/ (http://www.minergy.com/technology/lightweight-aggregate-lwa/)

http://www.minergy.com/wp-content/uploads/lwa_scan.jpg
Minergy’s LWA production facility was constructed as a means to beneficially reuse coal combustion fly ash from a power plant located in Oak Creek, Wis. LWA was commercially produced between 1994 and 2000, at which time the properties of the fly ash changed as a result of a new source of coal, thus allowing the fly ash to be marketed directly into the concrete industry without additional processing. This plant combined the fly ash, paper mill sludge from a coated paper mill in Wisconsin and municipal sludge from the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District to form a LWA product, meeting ASTM C330 and C331 LWA standards. The LWA was used in the local Milwaukee and Chicago construction markets.

urbanfarmer
10-28-2012, 05:20 PM
Urbanfarmer......they bake the stuff in a factory but the clay they use comes from a mine. I've read much about it, apparently they only use a certain type of clay. I guess it's the mineral content er summptin.

Said another way, it's like saying the car engine mine ran dry and there are no more car engines. Sure, car engines are manufactured out of raw materials that are mined, but... :lol:

Soil is made of sand, silt, and clay. Clay is made out of very small colloidal particles of clay often less than 0.02 mm in size. The properties of clay are often dependent on its elemental constituents, or as you have correctly stated, the mineral content. However, I am not so sure the clay needed to make LECA is particularly scarce or rare on this Earth whereby a single clay deposit running dry would cause a company as large as Hydroton stop producing a profitable product.

PonicDan
10-28-2012, 05:23 PM
Urbanfarmer......they bake the stuff in a factory but the clay they use comes from a mine. I've read much about it, apparently they only use a certain type of clay. I guess it's the mineral content er summptin.

Said another way, it's like saying the car engine mine ran dry and there are no more car engines. Sure, car engines are manufactured out of raw materials that are mined, but... :lol:

Well then I"m all ears, can you please educate me as to why there is a shortage of hydroton?? Sure you can google and see all types of deals. Try to actually ORDER some.

urbanfarmer
10-28-2012, 05:29 PM
Urbanfarmer......they bake the stuff in a factory but the clay they use comes from a mine. I've read much about it, apparently they only use a certain type of clay. I guess it's the mineral content er summptin.

Said another way, it's like saying the car engine mine ran dry and there are no more car engines. Sure, car engines are manufactured out of raw materials that are mined, but... :lol:

Well then I"m all ears, can you please educate me as to why there is a shortage of hydroton?? Sure you can google and see all types of deals. Try to actually ORDER some.
I know that Hydroton/LECA are not mined out of the ground. I did not state I knew anything else, especially not about the company Hydroton. :mrgreen:

urbanfarmer
10-28-2012, 05:31 PM
Okay, I checked. Are you saying that none of these online retailers actually sell the products listed:

https://www.google.com/search?q=hydroto ... 0&bih=1030 (https://www.google.com/search?q=hydroton&hl=en&prmd=imvns&source=univ&tbm=shop&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=Ys6NUMyZN-uo0AG674DgCw&ved=0CMUBELMY&biw=1600&bih=1030)

urbanfarmer
10-28-2012, 05:34 PM
I guess I should try to be more helpful! Have you considered using gravelite? I believe it costs about the same for a 50L bag of Hydroton as it does for a 27 cubic foot truckload of gravelite. Hope that helps! :mrgreen:

The other David (not the one above) has used it, I believe. Maybe he will chime in on that.

Gravelite spec sheet:
http://www.bigriverind.com/pages/produc ... heet11.pdf (http://www.bigriverind.com/pages/products/TechSheets/GRAVELITETechInfoSheet11.pdf)

This stuff is lighter than lava rock. A cubic yard of lava rock is about the same for me. You can try that too... lava rock! :mrgreen:

A 50 L hydroton bag is 1.76573 cubic feet; so, there are about 15.3 bags of Hydroton in volume per cubic yard. At $50 a bag that's over $750 per cubic yard of hydroton. I'm almost sure that a cubic yard of gravelite was well under $100 with tax and everything last time I checked.

Lava rock for a cubic foot bag is about $3-$4 at my big box hardware store. That's still far cheaper than Hydroton.

IF I HAD TO GUESS, those clay pebbles at $50 a bag is the reason they had to stop making it. :lol: :lol: :lol:

danksnax
10-28-2012, 05:44 PM
Going into the local hydroponics store the other day looking for a growing medium, I snagged the last two bags of hydroton that was in stock and the owner told me that the mine in Germany had ran dry, which is ashame because this is my first experience with the medium and hope it wont be my last.
As to where to get more a very quick google search for hydroton led me to some deals on the very first link.

:lol: :lol: :lol: Hydroton is manufactured in a factory not mined out of the ground. :lol: :lol: :lol: Holy s**t, I can't stop laughing!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:

Well that was the knowledge shared with me. Pardon if it really is incorrect but I'm glad you got a good laugh for the day, keeps you healthy.

urbanfarmer
10-28-2012, 05:46 PM
Going into the local hydroponics store the other day looking for a growing medium, I snagged the last two bags of hydroton that was in stock and the owner told me that the mine in Germany had ran dry, which is ashame because this is my first experience with the medium and hope it wont be my last.
As to where to get more a very quick google search for hydroton led me to some deals on the very first link.

:lol: :lol: :lol: Hydroton is manufactured in a factory not mined out of the ground. :lol: :lol: :lol: Holy s**t, I can't stop laughing!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:

Well that was the knowledge shared with me. Pardon if it really is incorrect but I'm glad you got a good laugh for the day, keeps you healthy.
It's silly I know. Check out my last post for some ideas for Hydroton/LECA alternatives. (end of page 1)

Oliver
10-28-2012, 07:24 PM
The owner of the German company (Oketau / Easy Green), a fellow named Rudolf (who stood under our ceiling swamp cooler vent to stay cool the whole time he was in our house a few of years back), wanted to retire and turn over his business to a family member but that didn't work out so he sold pieces of the company and therefore Hydroton is no longer being made.

A new product called Hydrocorn (hate the name) sells "45" liter bags of a similar product at about the same price and, therefore, more per liter. The problem is (other than the price) when we purchased enough bags for a customer to fill two of our grow beds he had ordered, the bags seemed lighter than the "45" liters indicated on the label should have weighed. So we weighed the bags. A 50 liter bag of Hydroton weighs 49 pounds. We know this because we ship it. A 45 liter bag of Hydrocorn weighed in at somewhere in the high 30 pound range (I don't remember exactly how much) and we expected it to weigh about 43 pounds. It takes 5 1/2 half 50 liter Hydroton bags to fill a single grow bed (275 liters). We decided to dump enough Hydrocorn bags into a grow bed that normally takes the 275 liters of Hydroton to fill. We expected 6.1 x 45 liter Hydrocorn bags to fill the bed but it took 7 bags instead. That works out to little over 39 liters per bag. The importer made up the difference by sending us the 3 extra bags for free (including the shipping) to fill the two grow bed order.

This was recent and we will continue to communicate with them about the labeling (and price).

Oliver

bcotton
10-29-2012, 06:22 AM
There's tradeoffs but expanded shale is the closest thing to hydroton and at 1/10th the price.

I moved to expanded shale way before i knew i couldnt get anymore hydroton.
brian

David - WI
10-29-2012, 07:45 AM
IF I HAD TO GUESS, those clay pebbles at $50 a bag is the reason they had to stop making it. :lol: :lol: :lol:
"Bagged" products are always absurdly expensive compared to bulk... hydroton/LECA is used by the train car load in lightweight concrete and "green" building roof systems. I guarantee they don't pay $750/yd for it.

In fact, the 50L bags of hydroton I ordered were $20 per bag... but by the time I ordered them, they only had 28 bags left and did not expect to get more. Shipping a full pallet would have added another $535 (+$16 per bag). :x

Shipping the pallet of hydrokorrels added $12.50 per bag; which knocked off $3.50 of the $6 price difference.

The Hydroton that we do have is more uniform in size & shape, so the Hydro Korrel (now called hydrocorn) may "settle" or "compact" more; but the claim was that the Hydro Korrels provided a little more support for the plants and a lot more "effective" surface area because the hydroton was a little too round & uniform. :?

It takes 22g of the "hydro korrels" to fill a 2" net pot versus 29g of hyrdroton; so the bags should be 25% lighter for the same 50L volume. That saves about 4 lbs of media weight per raft using 3" net pots.

urbanfarmer
10-29-2012, 08:53 PM
I agree. It's cheaper to buy by the bulk, but Hydroton/LECA is expensive even compared apples to apples, so to speak. A bag of lava rock (which is way better than LECA imho) costs about $3 or $4 at my local garden store. I think even WallyWorld carries it for that price. If you're lucky enough to live in Hawai'i it's a fraction of that cost, so I'm told.

bsfman
10-29-2012, 09:11 PM
I agree. It's cheaper to buy by the bulk, but Hydroton/LECA is expensive even compared apples to apples, so to speak. A bag of lava rock (which is way better than LECA imho) costs about $3 or $4 at my local garden store. I think even WallyWorld carries it for that price. If you're lucky enough to live in Hawai'i it's a fraction of that cost, so I'm told.

Home Depot carries it at the same price as pea gravel - I think I pay about $3.80 a sack for pea gravel and the sack holds a half cubic foot of either pea gravel or lava rock - so basically it's a tad over a buck a gallon for lava rock.

David - WI
10-30-2012, 06:31 AM
I don't have any opinion on what is "better" for any given application, just that hydroton at $20/bag is not nearly as prohibitive as $50/bag.

[attachment=0:1926x1av]hydroton.jpg[/attachment:1926x1av]

Spaz 52
10-30-2012, 11:07 AM
Be Nice UF. lol

PonicDan
11-01-2012, 07:45 PM
Okay, I checked. Are you saying that none of these online retailers actually sell the products listed:

https://www.google.com/search?q=hydroto ... 0&bih=1030 (https://www.google.com/search?q=hydroton&hl=en&prmd=imvns&source=univ&tbm=shop&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=Ys6NUMyZN-uo0AG674DgCw&ved=0CMUBELMY&biw=1600&bih=1030)

Yes to this question. I"ve called them to see if they actually have product. They don't. Well at least three weeks ago. They all said the company that mines the clay is closing/closed.

PonicDan
11-01-2012, 07:50 PM
How are these products on the hands when planting/harvesting plants?? I was trying to stay away from lava rock. Seems the sharp edges weren't conducive to skin.

bcotton
11-02-2012, 10:24 AM
hydroton and expanded shale are relatively smooth. Not like lava rocks. Maybe the people who use lava rock can expand on how easy it is to work with but i have never heard anyone complain.. Personally i dont spend much time digging around the growbed. I throw the seeds on top and once they start getting bigger i will pull them up and space them out better, then i pull them up when they are done producing. You may incur more root damage moving plants from lava rock but then again, you could just space the seeds with more care to spacing than i do.


brian

PonicDan
11-03-2012, 06:10 AM
I found a product called riverlite today. Company isn't open so I'll wait til Monday.

davidstcldfl
11-03-2012, 12:15 PM
I did a quick look at their web page. I found this about the ph of the material....

pH TR430 9.0 - 10.0
TR430 Modified 7.0 – 8.0


They did have a page for horticulture applications....that has some files for it's use...
http://riverlite.com/index.php/literature/horticulture