Bog Wood

[GuppyDude]

Greetings my fellow fish people and sea monkeys; iv got a question.

I have just purchsed a rather large peice of bog wood for the 20g that im re-vamping, and it wont sink. The peice was attached to a heavy peice of slate that i for sure would have thought would keep it down, but the whole thing is quite boyant.

My question is, if i let this thing soak for awhile, will it sink? It absorbed water quite well, and im hopeing that a good night's soak will draw it to the bottom. My only other opting after this would be to buy another peice of slate to hold it down, but id like to avoid extra costs if i can. I supose i could saw off a portion of the log, that would do it, but its quite an elegant peice, and i dont want to damage it.

 

[Tsi_User]

Greetings my fellow fish people and sea monkeys; iv got a question.

I have just purchsed a rather large peice of bog wood for the 20g that im re-vamping, and it wont sink. The peice was attached to a heavy peice of slate that i for sure would have thought would keep it down, but the whole thing is quite boyant.

My question is, if i let this thing soak for awhile, will it sink? It absorbed water quite well, and im hopeing that a good night's soak will draw it to the bottom. My only other opting after this would be to buy another peice of slate to hold it down, but id like to avoid extra costs if i can. I supose i could saw off a portion of the log, that would do it, but its quite an elegant peice, and i dont want to damage it.

One of the pieces I used to have in our 30 gallon took 2 weeks of soaking before it sunk..

Let it soak for a couple weeks, and if it still floats then try the slate

 

[GuppyDude]

O wow, weeks...lol

Ill wait it out then, thanks a bunch for the help.

 

[Themuleous]

Yeh, give it time, it should sink in the end!

Sam

 

[chardonnay1000]

mine took about 2 weeks, the water in the bucket it was soaking in went a yukky orange/brown colour and you dont want that orange tint in your tank

 

[Mr Miagi]

mine took about 2 weeks, the water in the bucket it was soaking in went a yukky orange/brown colour and you dont want that orange tint in your tank

You can frequently replace that water so more and more tannins are realeased over the weeks/days you have it in the bucket! Tannins are ok for most fish species though, I never minded a bit of discolouration in my tank! You can try remove this with carbon in your filter.

 

[GuppyDude]

I dont have a large enough bucket for this peice of wood, it's quite massive. Im soaking it in teh 20g, but there are not any fish in there any more, and iv got the filter going on cycle. The orange tint doens't bother me, it actually looks pretty cool. ill probably be doing water changes before i add anything liveing anyway. Thank you all for the replies.

 

[GuppyDude]

Its been submerged for a little over a month now, and it's still very much wants to float. Iv notice that it does not take quite as much wait to hold down any more, but it still wants to rise even with a good 5 pounds of weight on it. Can anyone suggest a solution?

 

[Themuleous]

Unless you can find some way of holding it down when its in the tank, its a case of waiting and seeing how it does after several months of soaking. Not all wood sinks.

Sam

 

[lljdma06]

Its been submerged for a little over a month now, and it's still very much wants to float. Iv notice that it does not take quite as much wait to hold down any more, but it still wants to rise even with a good 5 pounds of weight on it. Can anyone suggest a solution?

I feel your pain. Sometimes, I don't think the slate anchors are very good at their jobs, especially if the wood is buoyant. I ended up using wood with suction cups attached to them. The suction cups secure pretty tightly to the aquarium glass. Of course, this only works if you haven't put in your substrate yet. I even suction-cupped wood onto the side of my aquarium. It gives a nice dimension and you can't even see the cups anymore, they're covered by so many plants. This is how I attached the wood in my 36g. My 20g has mopani, so that stuff sinks like there's no tomorrow.

If you had another piece of wood that was already waterlogged, I'd use it to weigh down the wood, or some larger rocks. I don't think you'd be open to the whole weighing in down with your hand for 6 weeks thing, as you're probably a bit busy for that one. You could try installing your own suction cups. They are pretty much drilled or screwed into the wood like the slate. They'd have to be a pretty strong cup though. Did you try burying the slate into the substrate? What type of substrate is it? Some of those new plant ones can barely hold the plants down and don't have enough mass to hold anything large down.

llj

 

[JamesC]

It can take months until the wood sinks. Make sure the whole piece is submerged. Have also heard you can add 500g baking soda to the water to speed things up. It's supposed to help draw the trapped air out somehow. Never tried it though.

JAmes

 

[GuppyDude]

The wood itself has actually been in a large rubber tub full of water, and its been weighed to the bottom with large rocks for a month. Ill see what i can come up with in the way of suction cups, that might just do the trick. If not, i suppose it'll just have to soak. Thank you all for your time and help.