Problems with wood

Wills said:

Hi I'm in the process of setting up my new tank and I was wanting to re-use some of the wood from my old tank but having some problems and wondered if anyone had encountered something similar before?

Its all redmoore wood that I got in 2018 - it was all pre soaked to get rid of tanins and sink. When I closed the tank down probably August last year I kept it all and its been dried out since. While planning to set the new tank up I combined it and glued it to make a tree style stump like in the pic below - I've held it in place here as it imediately started to float as I expected.

What I didnt expect was to get more tannins, thick biofilm has covered the back piece of wood and as it starts to sink where I have glued it the wood is breaking away so the structure has more a less collapsed. Has anyone experienced this before?

Can't decide if I should let all the wood sink and then re-glue it together or if I just come up with a different idea that doesnt need glue. What would you do?

Wills

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Blackwater guru said:

If the glue you used is not toxic to the fish then letting it sink and then re-gluing it should work out.

If it's not aquarium safe glue that you used the best thing you can do is to immediately throw away the wood and try again with new pieces of wood along with glue that is aquarium safe and doing a water change may or may not be needed depending on how much glue has leaked in the aquarium.

Another strategy that does not involve glue is to simply bind the wood with pieces of transparent string that are fairly durable and aquarium safe.

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Colin_T said:

Problems with wood - I have that problem, it's caused by old age and blood pressure medication

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Wills said:

Finally someone on my level! I've posted similar questions elsewhere and no one made the obvious joke

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