SunSun Malfian Stone review

[ILLUSN]

I bought a few litres of this stuff when ASA had it on sale. at $5 a box i figured it was worth a go.

The packaging is nice enough, the surface area is 1200m2/L which is almost as good as JBL micromech (1500m2/L) and better then Eheim (450m2/L) and martix and siporax (210m2/L).

if you read (and believe) the box this suff in addition to serving as a host for biological filtration it also contains minerals which it adds to the water column Al,Fe,Na,Ca,Mg,K and Tai(???).

[ILLUSN]

getting to the actual product, it ships in a fine weave mesh bag which i try not to use for my biomedia.

On first inspection i beleive the manufactures were very generous in that they filled the bag to busting point!

On closer inspection this is the dustiest media I've ever used.

It took 18 WASHES!!!! to get a bucket with 4L of this stuff in it to run clean enough for me to see it in the bottom of the bucket. After all that there was what looked like dust, Sand and SOIL(?) in my bath tub. The final volume of the bag of washed malfian stone was about 80% full so over 20% was lost in cleaning.

[ILLUSN]

I was hoping to remove the bag and put this stuff into the top tray of my Aquis 2400, however the partica size was so small I was worried i'd loose it through the holes in the basket.

It's in the filter now and I'll review again after a couple of weeks of use. so far the media has had no effect on my pH,kH or gH and the fish in that tank have just spawned.

http://www.discusforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13759

All in all for $5 what can you really expect? if the surface area is as good as it says then the biological activity should be no worse then any of the eheim media filling 4 of my 8 filters. the substrate size is small so i assume it will have to be replaced more often but as i never replace my eheim pro substrate i guess in the long run after a few years sticking to malfian stone will be more expensive.

I found the dust inconvenient and for that reason alone I dont think i'll be buying anymore of this product, Also as my water chemistry has remained completely unchanged i doubt I can believe any of the comments on the pacaging about this product releasing vital minerals back into the water to
fully meet the demands of the fish's nessary minerals or that it
can adjust the percentage of minerals in the water, which can always keep the water PH lever in neutral
as my ph stays at a steady 6.5 :P

*NB all quotes directly from the labeling on the side of the box see pic 2 :)