Driftwood off the beach

[ormali]

Is it possible to use driftwood from a beach in a freshwater tank?

I realise that it will have a high salt content due to much venturing on (or under) the open waves, but was wondering if it's possible to soak this out? Or some other treatment that will draw it out of the wood?

Found some really cool pieces on the beach today that I would love to put in my tank but don't want dead fishies as a result... :lol:

[kevin_wgtn]

Yes it is possible to use beach driftwood in a tank.

Normally I would soak the wood in fresh water for approx 2 weeks. This does allow salt etc to wash out, but it also allows you to check that the wood will sink and that it is not discolouring the water too much as some woods leach and will turn your water brown very quickly.

I normally collect the darker driftwoods, clean the dead wood off with a wire brush, then soak it.

[livebearer_breeder]

The stuff that leeches out of the driftwood, is called tanins, andit makes ur water yellowy brown, its harmless to fish, and some ppl like that look. Especialy if you want to do a amazon type setup.

Shae

[HummingBird]

It's actually called tannin and is both singular and plural in it's usage, no 's' needed.

[PENEJANE]

I have a piece of driftwood in my tank. I picked it up off the beach about a year ago and just kept it because I liked it but it ended up living in the wash house on a shelf. I put it in a bucket of water for a week then in my tank held down with two large quartz rocks. It did change the colour of my water slightly but nothing too dramitic.

No dead fish, apart from dropsy (one fish only) and one deformed guppy whos tail was dropping and giving him a real bad back. Wasn't sure if it was from TB or not but had more than one sympthom to say it was.

But yeah if soaked long enough as said in previous post you should be fine

[deeveus]

A much cheaper way of doing it as Pieces of wood here in Dunedin petshops (500mm long) are around $50 bucks. So if you can do it the free way....

[Ira]

Pieces of driftwood from the beach are great. Don't worry about the salt content. I don't know why everyone worries about it? There'd be such a tiny amount of salt in the wood that would leach out slowly it'd just be a tiny fraction of the amount you'd get when adding salt medicinally to the tank. Many fish like a little salt in the water and you wouldn't even put enough in that they'd notice.

I just give it a good wash, pour boiling water over it and throw it in the tank until it sinks.

[jude]

I use driftwood from rivers and the beach. If it is small enough I boil it to kill any greebies and bugs. Boiling is also supposed to help it get saturated enough to sink and stay sunk. Adding baking soda to the water apparently helps that as well.

For larger pieces of driftwood I soaked them in water for a few day. I put in a large slurp of janola to help kill anything bad and soaked it overnight in that. Then I soaked it for about a week in straight water - I changed it a couple of times to get rid of any trace of janola.

And I gave one mucky one a good scrub to clean it up

Fish are all fine and the bristlenoses happily chomp on the wood

Cheers

Jude

[Caryl]

All my driftwood came from the beach. Salt content is negligible after a good soak and scrub in freshwater to clean it. Just make sure shells and stuff are not wedged in nooks and crannies. All I ever did with mine was scrub it with a nail brush, give it a squirt with the hose then put it in the tank.

[heni]

We collected a really nice piece of wood from Riverton Beach some time back, but how on earth do you get it to sink? Mind you, ours might be OK now as I've had it in a bucket weighted down, sitting in water, for a few weeks. I've noticed our bristle noses like the current piece of wood that we have. Those fish are so cool.

Heni :-)