Interested in seeing if anyone has ever gathered your own driftwood and live plants, if so what did you gather and how did you make it safe for your tank. Always been something I have thought of but never really did anything with it. Any info would be great!
Has anyone gathered their own?
- Thread starter tavydown
- Start date
I've collected driftwood from lakes and the ocean. Soak in bucket of water with bleach overnight. I've also collected plants from lakes. Soak plants in a bleach solution - 19 part water to 1 part bleach for one to three minutes, depending upon how delicate the plant is.
I've found stumps in the woods. Sawed em up and soaked them in the bath tub. My wife wasn't very happy bc it looked like it was full of coffee a few days later but it worked. Stuck them on slate with stainless screws
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I got mine from the woods near my house. It was a big branch that feel off of a tree that was struck by lighting. Soaked it in my old 75 same as above. I never collected any plants though
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All my driftwood is collected. Just soak it well. Don't know about plants.
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Collecting from water is good because there will less tannins leached from the wood to deal with, so there will less soaking.
But, when you collect from water you need to be careful not to add a parasite or other water born organism that could harm your fish.
This is why you will either need to boil or bleach whatever you collect. If you choose to bleach be sure all traces of bleach has been removed before you add it to the tank.
Collecting dry or dead, has to be soaked for a lot longer to remove the natural tannin in the wood. And to water log the pieces so that they don't float.
I never put any kind of "green" wood in my tanks. Because some tree saps can be toxic to fish in the confines of an aquarium.
"Green" wood would be live or fresh cut trees.
But, when you collect from water you need to be careful not to add a parasite or other water born organism that could harm your fish.
This is why you will either need to boil or bleach whatever you collect. If you choose to bleach be sure all traces of bleach has been removed before you add it to the tank.
Collecting dry or dead, has to be soaked for a lot longer to remove the natural tannin in the wood. And to water log the pieces so that they don't float.
I never put any kind of "green" wood in my tanks. Because some tree saps can be toxic to fish in the confines of an aquarium.
"Green" wood would be live or fresh cut trees.
Yeah. I boiled my wood. No bleach. Also I did collect dry and never had tannin issues. As far as water logging I just used big rocks to hold the wood down and few months later it stays sunken without the stones.
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Good point on the "sap". Also make sure all the bark is off
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+1 my wood was collected dry and I don't have tanning issues at all. The leaves in the tank made the water look yellow
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