Grow in polymers?

[Corwin]

Hi! I'm new here and live in Germany.

I received a Phal at my birthday and want to put it in SH (being away from home for a few days pretty often). So I did some research on the web and stumbled across something called hydrophilic polymers

It looks like that : Galerie de photos des cristaux rétenteur d'eau Floragel (sorry that's in french)

I would really like to have your thoughts about that medium...

[GreenpinkE]

Sorry I can't say anything more than I've seen some phaps in it, and they all looked happy. One had a spike on it. To me, it's more like water culture than S/H. Makes a nice display!

[sept2256]

In my opinion this system can't work. you periodically have to add fresh medium and that is impossible, as the polimer hardly release the original water to take the new fertilized medium
PIerangelo

[Ray]

The acrylates used for such water-retention products do degrade over time, but that would likely be fairly slow.

However, as they absorb they swell, then shrink as the give up the water, so the medium would constantly be "repacking" itself, leading to a rot-suffocating mess in short order.

And, as Pierangelo related, the fertilizer minerals will affect the polymer.

[Corwin]

Thanks for the answers! A pity they don't make some glass-like pourous "crystals"... it would look great.