Driftwood - is it ok?

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Dfuse

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Sep 9, 2007
8
0
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Eastern US
I live near some pretty awesome lakes, and i like to do a lot of spearfishing in my free time.. lots of times when i don't see any fish for a while, i'll pick up a nice chunk of driftwood and swim it back to the boat.. Im wondering, what do i need to soak it in before i introduce it into my tank ? some type of conditioner obviously.. ?

I just lost my camera in the river, or i'd take some pictures and show you guys.. but this driftwood i find is really neat stuff.. looks so cool i could probably sell it


Dfuse
 
camera falling in the river, eh? Sounds familiar...and suspicious...
 
DO IT! many people will say dont do it, but u just need to wash the wood many different times, and let it soak for a while then discard the water, then scrub it down. IF THERE IS BARK IT IS BAD. that will mold. So just go get whatever wood u would like, i went out hiking up my river and found my own, saved me hundreds. Good luck!

Added some pics of the wood i collected, looks decent for FREEEEEE.

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yea i agree, i do it to, i found some nice peices, hose it off, soak it, hose it, soak it, hose it, scrub it, hose it, add it to the tank. never had a problem till me last peice grows a white clear slimy growth so i took it out and washed it again and hosed it added, i grew back but alot slower and at a smaller amount so im sure next time it will barley be there and the time after that i hope it doenst grow back
 
smallguy;1135289; said:
yea i agree, i do it to, i found some nice peices, hose it off, soak it, hose it, soak it, hose it, scrub it, hose it, add it to the tank. never had a problem till me last peice grows a white clear slimy growth so i took it out and washed it again and hosed it added, i grew back but alot slower and at a smaller amount so im sure next time it will barley be there and the time after that i hope it doenst grow back
Click to expand...

If u ever happen to have a log that does grow algae or anything like that, the best thing to do is have some convicts or other easily breedable fish in the tank, and the babies will FEED on the algae and grow BIGGER FASTER. I had cons breed in two seperate 55 G tanks, 1 tank had the algae log, and other tank didnt. the algae log tank had babies twice the size as the others!
 
got some awesome pieces im gonna clean up and put in my tank, my 13 red bellies are gonna love em

I'll show some pics when i can

Thanks guys

Dfuse
 
I was fishing at a local lake a while back and found a beautiful 3’x 2’ x 1’ stump all covered in mud and god knows what else. As I was setting up a 120g at the time, I threw it in the back of the truck and brought the thing home. After 3-4 hours of scrubbing the stupid thing in the bathtub, it still was dirty as hell. Soaked it, drained it. Soaked it drained it, on the fifth or sixth time it was still turning the water a very dark rusty color from all the tannic acid. I was setting up a South American tank, so I didn’t mind a little coloration, but it was looking like a lost cause. Then I had an idea. At the time I worked at a café in a dorm; huge place fed about 500 kids x 3 times a day. And in this café we happened to have a rather huge tilt skillet about 6’ long by 3’ wide and a foot deep. Well I was a mid-level manager/supervisor so one night when I was the only one there, I drug the huge stump in there and starting filling the tilt with water. None of the underlings really said anything about how boiling a dirty stump was violating pretty much all the health codes they could think of, hell most of them didn’t even know that there was anything wrong with it, that was my job! They would come up laugh a little, and ask what the stump was for; I must have said “fish tank, get back to work” at least 7 times. Well I let that sucker boil for at least three hours to make sure all the little nasties on it were dead, and of course, just when I was about to dump the dark brown water and haul the stump out to the car, in came the boss to drop of the next week’s schedule. We both just froze, he looked at the stump, looked at me, and then back at the stump. “What the hell is that?” “Tree stump” “What is it doing in the tilt skillet?” “Boiling, it’s for a fish tank.” “uhh…….well… here's...here's the schedule” The poor guy was just too befuddled to yell at me. I could tell he wanted to say something, but I jumped up really quick and left to go take care of some 'work' and he was gone by the time I got back. He never brought it up again, and the stump is still looking great in my tank!
 
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