Drift wood

[ger87410]

Can I use a sand blasted piece of wood as drift wood? All the driftwood at the lfs is is a stick with a flat rock attached.

 

[ger87410]

Has anyone ever tried it?

 

[sushi]

Hello. I don't know where you live, but I'm in New Zealand. I live over the road from a beach.
All the wood in my tanks has been from the beach.
If you find the bits that are dark brown, they are already waterlogged, and so will sink.

I collect the dark bits, the pretty ones and either leave them outside in the rain for about 3 weeks and then scrub them silly.
Or the first time I got beach wood, I boiled it. I boiled one end for about 10 minutes, then turned it around, and did the same on the other end.
I'm not sure, but this might actually waterlog an un-waterlogged piece of wood, so it sinks.
ANyway. Doing the boiling thing, which I have done a few times, has never caused problems. There's never been salt contamination, plus all the germs are very dead. It will smell really bad, throughout your whole house, so you may want to do it when you can open windows and doors. Same if you boil stones.

I've found either methods to be effective and safe.
It rains a lot here.

 

[bryce2003]

By boiling the wood before putting it in the tank supposedly releases a lot of the tannins the wood contains. Therefore less released into your tank. We're pretty lucky here in Australia as it isn't too far, well for me anyway to find some scrub with suitable wood, or mangroves with really good mangrove root for use in my tanks. Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Bryce.

 

[Aquascaper]

All my wood came from the Lake district for free