Bog Wood/ Drift Wood Question.

[Whitester]

I have been seeing alot of nice tank pictures with bog wood / drift wood inside the tank. I have been to the LFS in my area, 4 of them. They all want ridiculous prices for pieces of wood. Some as much as $50.00 and other with a small branch for $20.00. I am not going to pay that much money for a piece of wood. hahaha. I was wondering, can I just get a piece of drift wood from my local stream? If so, what would I need to do to the wood before I put it in my fish tank? I don't want to harm my fish, nor introduce some bugs or parasites.

Thanks for any help.

 

[mickspark81]

im far from an expert but id assume provided you boiled the wood for a duration it should be ok

Thing is tho. As the wood is unidentified it could severly alter your water chemisty in your tank

Id suggest if you want to do this you should place it in a bucket of water at home...wait say a week then use your liquid test kit (presuming you have one) on that water to check for GH, KH, PH, Ammonia, NitrItes, NitrAtes and compare results to whats currently in your tank

Im no expert but hope i helped

 

[Ed Green]

I have been seeing alot of nice tank pictures with bog wood / drift wood inside the tank. I have been to the LFS in my area, 4 of them. They all want ridiculous prices for pieces of wood. Some as much as $50.00 and other with a small branch for $20.00. I am not going to pay that much money for a piece of wood. hahaha. I was wondering, can I just get a piece of drift wood from my local stream? If so, what would I need to do to the wood before I put it in my fish tank? I don't want to harm my fish, nor introduce some bugs or parasites.

Thanks for any help.

As above I am not an expert but I assume wood is wood ;-) i don’t think it is treated before made available for sale. If I was going to take wood from outside I would make sure that it isn’t rotting and is a hard wood? I would also soak it for at least a week in good hot water. I also assume you are safe picking woods and old roots naturally found in waterways.

Do you not have a petsmart or similar near you? that sort of store usually sells bogwood nice and cheep.

 

[mickspark81]

The reason i suggested placing the wood in a bucket then testing the water after 1 week is because..If you are getting wood from a stream you just never know.Water could possibly be polluted and over time a build up of chemicals in the stream water may have been absorbed by the wood..Yeah lol, its probably not..but..is it worth losing a tank on the offchance

 

[Whitester]

Thanks for the info.... I am sure most of the streams are polluted around here. So maybe I will stop in Pet Smart and see if they are any cheaper. In some of the local mom and pop fish stores, it looks like they just found pieces of wood from a local waterway. But maybe I am wrong. It does appear to be just drift wood with a piece of slate rock screwed to the bottom. hahaha.

 

[cowboy507]

If I was going to take wood from outside I would make sure that it isn’t rotting and is a hard wood? I would also soak it for at least a week in good hot water. I also assume you are safe picking woods and old roots naturally found in waterways.

Wood from outside is fine, where do you think they got theirs? you will want a wood that is not green or rotting. Most will float and will need a good soaking for a while to get it waterlogged and will sink, or you can do what the store did and attach a rock. boil first for ~20min and then you will need to soak for at least a week or so.

 

[mickspark81]

I would still test it first to be sure tho.. (im not being over precautious as a couple of streams by where i live are quite heavily polluted).

Your call tho.. (I too begrudge paying loads of money for a piece of wood)

I know you can say in general "water outside is fine" but only you know the area where you live and as you said your streams are polluted. You are going to soak the wood anyways so what harm will testing the water do at the end

 

[arobinson1984]

I agree with mickspark,

Different woods can alter your tanks PH quite dramatically so it would be better to be safe than sorry for the sake of a week keeping it in a bucket and testing it regularly.

Andy

 

[Buddyboy67]

living here in N Ireland we are lucky to be surrounded by peat bogland from which we can extract large pieces of bog oak which has been buried for a couple of thousand years in anaerobic conditions, thus stopping decay.After several weeks of soaking and replacing with fresh water this can be easily used in f/w tanks although releases high quantities of tannin, thus several coats of clear varnish can be applied to stop it staining the water chocolate brown..
Also drift wood that has been sun bleached around lough neagh, large f/w lake, can be varnished and attached to slate before being placed in position...this needs to be attached or else it will float!!!

 

[RobynR]

Whitester, I'm in the same predicament. I just went to a local park today and picked up a few pieces of wood... thought I'd try soaking them and see how the process goes and what they do to the water. Not sure I'll be brave enough to use them for my tank, but I'm seeing pieces of driftwood for $35 and I'm on a budget and would rather spend my money on fish! The pieces I found were some older ones from fallen trees and such. I scrubbed them with a steel brush to remove any soft (rotting) wood, kept the most solid-seeming pieces, and will see if they stay solid or fall apart when waterlogged. Not sure how well this will work with wood that isn't technically driftwood. If this doesn't work out, I may go check out the nearest lake for driftwood, but I'm kind of wary of what might be in the water since there are always boats out there and all.

 

[OldMan47]

Robyn, don't worry about whether or not the wood has been drifting. What you are doing, if the wood is thoroughly dried, will result in acceptable wood pieces for your tanks. I have gone so far as to cut a line around healthy wood on one of my hardwood trees and wait for the wood to air dry. Once it was air dried and the bark fell off, I attached it to some slate and popped it right into a tank. The water went a bit yellow from tannins but all is well in my tank. I have even exchanged some comments on a forum with a lady in Russia who is digging up fruit tree root wood, cutting it and drying it thoroughly and using it as decor in her tanks. It gives the appearance of roots hanging down into a creek where the dirt has eroded away and just left the roots. I like the idea but am too lazy to dig up part of the root structure on a tree just to use a sample of the roots as a decoration in a tank.