cheaper sub for drift wood???

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kendrew

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Jan 9, 2009
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Fall River Ma.
hello, i would like to add a tall piece of drift wood to my tank of central american cichlids....but i cant afford to spend $50.00 on a piece of wood for the tank....:irked:
is there a cheaper sobstitute for the drift wood??? can i use actual wood that is submerged in a local drange ditch instead??? can i find seasoned wood that would be used for fires and carve the bark off???? or can i buy lumber and carve it to look more natural??? :confused:
any help would be great!!!!;)
 
kendrew;2705547; said:
is there a cheaper sobstitute for the drift wood??? can i use actual wood that is submerged in a local drange ditch instead??? can i find seasoned wood that would be used for fires and carve the bark off???? or can i buy lumber and carve it to look more natural??? :confused:
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Ya'know I am not an expert or anything but I am really going to have to say no to all of these questions. I would assume those woods are or could be highly toxic to your fish/aquatic life.

I assume you might be able to find a plastic type wood decoration that might fit your needs but heck, chances are it will run right around the same amount.

Good luck!
 
You absolutely can use locally collected driftwood.

The driftwood you buy at the store was collected somewhere, and you can bet it wasn't in some pristine protected watershed either. You can get water quality data from USGS: http://ma.water.usgs.gov/; this will help you find water bodies that are relatively clean.

What you want to look for in driftwood: no soft or rotten wood; no bark; no sap. Ideal driftwood is hard and bonelike. Soaking it in tap water will leach out a lot of possible contaminants; add a little bleach to the tap water to halt decay and replace the water daily. Do this for two or three days, then rinse thoroughly and soak for a few hours with a big dose of dechlorinator to neutralize any bleach left behind. If the driftwood is still buoyant, you can bolt a piece of slate to the bottom, then bury the slate in your substrate.
 
I have not had the balls to try this yet but with the prices on driftwood I am getting closer
 
I recently went through this. I have a big long thread on this in the DIY section. Find a nice piece of wood you like. I would recommend something WITHOUT bark.... I'm certain your fish would pick it off and then you'd have bits of bark floating around.... Anyway, once you have a piece you like you have 2 options: Boiling of bleaching. If you choose to boil, boil it good and long. This will kill anything living in the wood and help eliminate those leaching tanins. I did a piece with bleach recently. I bleached my piece for a week with it fully submerged. I used about 30 mL of clorox (which is around 5.7% effective Cl by volume) per 10 gallons of water in a large trash can (cleand out, of course). After sitting for a week, I changed the water several times attempting to lower the Cl level in the wood (A lower concentration of any solution seperated from a higher concentration of the solution by a permeable barrier will lead to the higher concentration dropping in exchange for the lower concentration rising..... until the two concentrations equal one another on each side of the barrier). I then put around five to six times the amount of Amquel used to treat 10 gallons of water into the bucket with the wood and let that sit for a week (You may choose to be a little more generous with the AmQuel. I only used 10 gallons with the bleach. If you have an exceptionally large piece of DW, you'll need more dechlorinator. Besides, being generous with the stuff should help ensure you don't accidentally kill your fish). This should handle cleaning your wood, although you may still get some tanin leaching (carbon should take care of any discolored water). O yea, don't forget to scrub the wood with a brush to get any loose garbage off it before it goes in your tank!


By the way.... If you go with lumber, DO NOT get pressure treated lumber. It contains insecticides which WILL kill everything in your tank. You can't really clean this stuff out, its made to stay in the wood and resists leaving it!

Good luck!
 
:Dthis is intresting.....so i should be able to used a seasoned piece of wood....then just boil it for a good long time???? sounds good..... how long tho???? also where can i find "amquel" ????? i have never heard of it...... thanks for the info!!!!
 
look on ebay, there's some good deals on driftwood on there. i paid ten bucks for something similar to what my lfs had for 190$
 
Howdy,

Native driftwood is great - if you know what you're doing. There are serious dangers, let me give you a few tips on how to avoid them (I only have self-harvested wood in my tank)

- the river has to be clean, no industry along the shores!
- the wood has to be well weathered, washed out to the fiber. If it has bark, it's too young. It needs to look like it's spent years and years in the water
- only use wood from flowing bodies of water, never from stagnant areas.
- do not use wood that was covered with mud, it must be located in the stream
- Stay away from conifers. Look at the vegetation along the stream and upstream closely!

When I harvest driftwood, I first hose it down with a high-pressure cleaner (carwash). Then, I soak it in saturated salt solution (in the bath tub) for three days (daily fresh). That disinfects it all the way. Then I soak it for a couple of days in daily fresh water to de-salt it.

And off it goes into my tank. Generally, you have to weigh it down. I tie it to a rock with fishing line.

Self-harvested wood is a lot of fun. I always keep my eyes open when I go canoeing :thumbsup:

HarleyK
 
find a cheaper supplier for driftwood.. or try going for a different type of wood.. malaysian wood is the petshop standard and its way pricy...

spunjin has manzanita wood thats looks great and is way more pocket friendly.. some of it floats but out of the 15 or so pieces i got from him all but one of them has sunk
 
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