Wood

[Midwater]

Went to the wood yard. Went to a couple of wood yards.

Lots of teak, which I don't want. It floats. (You can get it to sink if it is totally waterlogged.) Quite a lot of green semi hard wood, which I don't want.

But I did get a pickup full of seasoned asian hard wood offcuts. All for twenty dollars (equivalent). Bloody heavy too. Not going to be easy to pick up and arrange in constrained area of fish tanks.

I did get a nice big asian hardwood splinter in my hand too!

The next job is to get the wire brush attachment for the angle grinder and totally clean all surfaces, get all dust, grime and soft surface fibres off. I might cut them into manageable smaller pieces.

 

[Chub_by]

Cool project!

 

[Midwater]

I did not wire brush them, I used an industrial power washer.

 

[Midwater]

Since months (plus) later, and an interesting observation.

This wood is very dense hard wood. If you are making stuff with it, you cannot just screw into it, you have to drill a pilot hole first. And if the hole is not big enough, you end up shearing the screw off when you tighten it.

So you might consider that this is the easiest wood to use in an aquarium.

I have only put the wood in a couple of tanks for about six weeks. Some pieces sank on their own, only just, and others very slowly floated up. Very nearly the density of water. And even the fish could push around and rearrange the large pieces.

I weighed them down with stones, which you might again consider the best way to get them fully waterlogged and stable.

I have done this before with teak, which compared to these hard woods is relatively light and soft. Two or three weeks and the teak stays where it is put.

But after six weeks, if I remove the stones, the hard wood still drifts around. I think I will leave the stones on for another six weeks and see what happens.

It appears that the heavier the wood, the slower it gets waterlogged. Maybe, the denser it is, the more tightly the fibres are arranged.