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05-23-2019, 11:40 PM
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Join Date: Jun 2008
Zone: 10a
Location: Coastal southern California, USA
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Boiling? Maybe. Pressure cooker, probably OK. But why take the chance? Also seems like a lot of trouble. The stuff isn't THAT expensive (especially relative to the cost of orchids), to say nothing of your time. And since it doesn't break down, you'd only end up with re-usable LECA if a plant died in it, I think. Sort of macabre...
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05-19-2020, 08:33 PM
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Join Date: Nov 2011
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I do all the time. I do have a 55 drum that i fill with hydroton. I fill the thing with Clorox 10 to 20 percent and let it rest for a couple of days. After that I dry the hydroton in the sun for as long as it does not smell like chlorine. Free to use after that. I water daily with copious amount of water, so no worries about salt accumulation.
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05-20-2020, 02:41 AM
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Banned
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Join Date: Apr 2020
Posts: 47
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If you want to save the planet, re-use and recycle as much as possible.
If you are not bothered, buy new stones every time. We live in an age of cheap and disposable times.
It actually works out cheaper for me to use disposable plastic forks than to clean my cuttlery every time, sometimes I am lazy and use a disposable fork but if everyone did that we'd have 7 billion forks ending in the ocean every day.
Just something to think about.
The more important question is if anyone has ever had any bad experience sterilizing and reusing their stones cause I certainly haven't and it seems the nay sayers are just speculating.
If my plants did all suffer from bacteria, viruses and fungi, I think I'd be giving up the hobby anyway 
Last edited by KingKong; 05-20-2020 at 02:45 AM..
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05-20-2020, 04:49 AM
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Join Date: Dec 2018
Location: Australia, North Queensland
Posts: 5,212
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Quote:
Originally Posted by IngieBee
And boiling isn't enough? I would have thought it would be :/ Hummm You're scaring me!  Maybe it's a difference between people with a huge collection and myself with only maybe 25 plants tops.??
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That should be enough. Otherwise, an outdoor pizza oven, or some sort of oven purely dedicated to heating these beads up ----- should do the trick.
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05-20-2020, 08:24 AM
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Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oak Island NC
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Pathogens are the least of my concerns about reusing LECA. Accumulated minerals is far more of a potential issue and neither boiling nor pressure cooking does anything for that.
With repeated wetting and drying, dissolved solids in the applied solutions get thoroughly deposited right down to the center of the pellets.
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05-20-2020, 10:07 AM
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Ray, if one theoretically did a flush after every feeding would not the accumulation be greatly reduced or even avoided all together?
I am not going to distract the conversation with other ways to reuse things but i wonder if someone grows in pure leca, they water daily and feed daily should the accumulation be next to nil? the leca would never get more than surface dry because of how often it is watered
I may not be understanding all the dynamics of the clay but i feel like if it was flushed daily the accumulation would be stopped or slowed down a great deal.
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05-20-2020, 02:02 PM
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Location: Oak Island NC
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DirtyCoconuts
Ray, if one theoretically did a flush after every feeding would not the accumulation be greatly reduced or even avoided all together?
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I doubt it can ever be avoided or eliminated altogether.
A new, dry pellet fully absorbs whatever solutions are applied, clear to its center. If pure water is passed over it right away, I can imagine the surface would be cleaned, with some reduction to a limited depth below, replaced with plain water.
If it stays saturated, the gradient of interior nutrients-to-pure surface would level out. If allowed to dry, the nutrients get concentrated toward the wet center as the water evaporated from the surface, precipitating as the concentration gets too high.
Wet it again, and you repeat the process. If the pellet was dry, the time it takes to redissolve the precipitated material is another factor to deal with, slowing the extraction process. Eventually, it'll be pretty well "full".
This will happen with ANY absorbent potting medium component, even if the dynamics are different.
One way to forestall it being an issue is to feed with VERY dilute solutions VERY frequently, so the medium doesn't ever dry out.
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05-20-2020, 02:31 PM
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i think i forgot to state that explicitly, in my hypo, the pellets are FIRST flushed in rainwater to clean them and start from a point of containing (next to nothing but water)….then, if they never get fully dry and the hypo was the same, flushed daily and fed very dilute daily, would not the clean center of the pebble never allow for much to enter and the flush prevents it from being around long enough to get in anyway?
Just spitballing
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05-20-2020, 03:26 PM
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Location: Abrantes
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I don't reuse anything but pots.
__________________
Meteo data at my city here.
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05-20-2020, 03:50 PM
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Join Date: Dec 2018
Location: Australia, North Queensland
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DC ...... probably the most important thing is ---- whether those accumulated substances - however far they do penetrate into the leca ----- adversely affects the plant or not. If the watering or fertilising scheme or schedule doesn't appear to impact (negatively) the plant for ages ------ eg. 10 years, 20 years etc, then that would suggest it's ok to just continue with that same leca.
If a scheme of monthly or twice-monthly weak fertilising is used, and the rest of the time is regular water --- then maybe the levels of mineral/salts (etc) in the leca won't be enough to do anything bad (or at all) to the orchid.
Maybe they have done lab testing to see what happens with these beads in terms of mineral/salt levels etc in the various portions (inner/outter etc) after some substantial growing time and some fertilising schedule. If results from the testing suggest some sort of one way ticket (to unusable state), then that would be disappointing for growers - as this wasn't part of the script or plan - in terms of needing to replace.
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