Question on driftwood

[samuel]

I just bought a few pieces of driftwood from the lfs, what do I need to do to prepare it for the fish tank? I have been soaking them in buckets of water and doing water changes so that the color comes out. I assume that when I rinse them and the water is "clean" then they will be ready.

thanx

 

[Flippin'thing bit me eye]

Do you have driftwood or bogwood? sometimes i prefere to drop mine in some boiling water before I put it in the tank, this prevents any fungal growth

 

[yvez9]

I've just purchased a piece of driftwood tonight myself

I put it in the sink and i pour boiling water a few times.
I will then put it in a bucket of water for a couple days, so it absorbs as much water as possible and loses some tanins.
Maybe in a week or two I'll add it to the tank.

 

[samuel]

Thanx for the input,

I think I will leave it soaking for a week or so, I have been adding boiling water to the pail, a fair bit of color has been coming out. My wife thinks I nuts...buying pieces of wood that I can probably pick up if I were to take a walk along the beaches of Ontario.

 

[Squirrelbuddies]

Although the lfs told me the wood would ( ) stain my tank water for a year, I only soaked it for a week....365 days seemed like an awfully long time to have the stuff soaking in pails around the house!

And yeh, my coworkers think I'm bonkers, too for buying driftwood or bogwood and boiling rocks on the stove.....

 

[bettaninja]

My lfs said that boiling it in a salt water solution is best to get the tannins out. But my driftwood was too big so I just soaked it in the laundry tub for 2 weeks. Some days I would put in hot water in the tub, but most of the time I just put cold water.

I scrubbed it a lot with a nail brush, I even got a plain toothbrush to scrub it, but there were wood parts that were very soft as I think part of the wood was rotten so I got a stainless steel metal brush from the hardware store and used that on it... worked a charm, took heaps of dead wood off which was causing the water to go very dark and murky.

It's in my tank now and is not leaching any tannins out.