Driftwood Help

[Ryan]

I went out last fall and found some realy nice dieces of drift wood for a chemeleon set-up I was doing. Well i now have extra peices and I was wondering how do I disinfect them . They are too big to boil and have been sitting out in the cold all winter. I want to bee safe seeing that it is going in with my Discus anyone got some ideas?

[BCWolfen]

Don't know if this would work or not, but....
Put them in bathtub with the hotest water your tank puts out.
Have 4 or pots of boiling water ready and add them in....boil some more and do it again.

That should heat enough to penetrate the wood and kill off anything in it.

Heat them in the oven?? But watch they don't catch fire....

You'd think that would cure them enough for a FW tank.

Just thoughts.

[Willow]

hot tub!

[Cap'n]

I like the idea of pouring boiling water over them, should work well enough. Most anything that could be harmful is probably already dead from winter exposure anyway.

Pretty sure I read about baking wood at low heat for quite some time to disinfect as well. Do a search on that and let us know what you come up with.

[Ryan]

Well i am going to do all of them. First i am going to do a 10 percent bleach soak. Rinse them 6 or 7 times with boiling water. let them soak then air dry then bake. I cant be too carful with my discus.

[Canadian Man]

If you want to be carefull than Don't Bother Using Them.

Why take the chance if your concerned

[G1GY]

The wood that is used in aquariums is bog wood. This wood spent many years in a bog and is full of tanum(sp)(The same stuff in peat moss.). This wood looks like drift wood, but is very dark in colour because of the tanum that's in it and it's heavier than other wood because of this. This wood does not rot very often and softens your water because of the tanum that's released from it(Great for South american fish, but bad for Africans.). Drift wood will need to be held down to stop from floating untill it's water logged and will most likely foul your water when it starts to rot.

I've seen many people try to use drift wood over the years, but very few keep it in their tank for long.

I wouldn't use it.

Just my opinion though.

[Delphinus]

Hmmm, geez I've never even given driftwood a second thought. I've got some pieces in my FW setup I found years ago, collected from creek beds and so on. A strategic rock here or there to keep it submerged until it's waterlogged, and away I went. My plecs actually nibble on the stuff so it tends to get a little smaller over time anyhow, eventually I'll need new pieces. I forget where I read this, but some (or all? ) plecostomus actually need that kind of roughage in their diet.

But uh.. yeah I'm with Canadian Man on this one though. If you're going to go through all that much trouble, then why bother in the first place? Isn't there stuff you could purchase instead and save yourself the hassle? Are discus so sensitive that anything less than 100% sterilized/pasteurized/etc. is going to be a problem?

[Ryan]

I would rather spend my time than spend money buying it. I dont know what the price of driftwood around your parts is but it is like 30 bukcs for a 12 inch peice here. Thats outrageous. But it kooks like i am going to have to start coughing up the cash for the store stuff.

Are discus so sensitive that anything less than 100% sterilized/pasteurized/etc. is going to be a problem?

No not realy i just dont want to take a chance. I have worked hard to get them to the size they are i dont want to do it for nothing.

Maybe i can make some synthetic stuff out of PVC and a bark wrap. Or reptile stuff.

[G1GY]

The reason this wood is getting so expensive is because mopani driftwood is not that easy to find any more. Prices for this stuff will only go up in the future and the available peices will only get smaller. I have around 40 peices of the stuff stored in my crawlspace that I'm saving for a rainy day.