Driftwood: Safe?

[RandomWiktor]

I'm going to be moving my goldfish into a bigger tank in a month or so. I'm hoping to make the tank look more natural by adding natural-colored gravel, river stones, realistic silk plants, and wood. However, I wasn't sure what wood would be best. I've also noticed the stuff costs about 15-30 bucks and looks identical or not as nice as the huge hunks of driftwood I find floating around in the river every day.
Now, the river is surely polluted and the like, but if I was to boil, rinse, and otherwise cleanse the wood, would it be safe to use in the tank? Its very nice, smooth, wood, and seems to sink if it gets saturated.

 

[Somethings Fishy Here]

If you are going to boil rinse and use something to clean the wood I would say there shouldn't be a problem as all driftwood thats sold in LFS has to go through some process of the like to become tank worthy. You may even want to do a search on cleaning driftwood as you may run across some process. But even if you dont find one, what you suggested sounds like a sound plan.

 

[rdd1952]

The only thing I would mention is to stay away from any type of evergreen wood (pine, cedar, etc). I'm can't remember the exact problem but have read on serveral occasions that they aren't good to use. I have gotten some pretty driftwood from Big Al's Online. The only problem is that you can't see the piece before you order it. You just order based on size.

 

[j.c]

the driftwood will be fine if you soak it in water,give it a bit of a scrub and leave it in the sun for maybe a week. But whatever you do don't ever use detergents of anytype because it will kill your fish.