Using Wood In A Fish Tank?

[n3ont3tra]

Hi, I went through my yard on stick patrol and found some interesting twigs n' stuff in the yard. The are mainly from Black Cherry Trees, and they're still green. I was wondering - is it safe to use these in an aquarium? How would I prepare it? Boil it?

I'm assuming it's okay, because that probably happens pretty often in nature. The only thing I'm really worried about is that the branches are still green.

 

[rdd1952]

The biggest problem you will run into, provided they don't contain any harmful chemicals, is that they will leach tannins and turn your water yellowish. You would definitely have to boil them and remove the bark as it would decay and create ammonia. Personally, I wouldn't try it.

Also, that's an awful lot of fish for a 29 gallon tank, probably 70" of fish. Do you not have problems with your water parameters?

 

[n3ont3tra]

Nitrates stay below 30, ammonia and nitrites are always zero. No aggression problems at all.

Thanks for the input on the wood.

 

[Gatorbait]

The biggest problem you will run into, provided they don't contain any harmful chemicals, is that they will leach tannins and turn your water yellowish. You would definitely have to boil them and remove the bark as it would decay and create ammonia. Personally, I wouldn't try it.

Also, that's an awful lot of fish for a 29 gallon tank, probably 70" of fish. Do you not have problems with your water parameters?

I would of thought the same thing too.

n3ont3tra is the "Fish Whisperer".

 

[n3ont3tra]

n3ont3tra is the "Fish Whisperer".

---

What's that mean lol?

 

[Bignose]

If it is green, you are going to have some really poor results with that wood. You really want to sap to drain out of the wood and pollute your tank? I didn't think so. Now, if you want to use those branches eventually, you can, but you need to let them dry out. Store them on top of some bricks (or anything up off the ground -- you don't want mold growing on the wood either!) until they dry out. Almost any wood will be dry in a year, but if they are jsut twigs and the like you might be able to come back in 4-8 weeks and they'll be ready then. But, while they are green, I wouldn't risk it.

I also wouldn't worry about boiling or anything. What is really going to be on that wood that would cause a problem for a fishtank? Bacteria on the wood are good for air environments, they are not going to survive for long submerged under water. No fish parasites will come in from the woods. I think people go way too overboard with this boiling and cleaning stuff. Sticks and rocks and everything fall into water that fish live in all the time. If sticks were so bad for fish, every stream/river/lake that had sticks in them would be empty of fish.

 

[n3ont3tra]

Thanks Bignose. I guess I'll wait a while and see how the wood dries, lol.

 

[chishnfips]

I think you can put most woods in to a tank, I put alderwood into my tank and its fine, even with the bark on it. But like someone said above dry them out because of the sap.

 

[The-Wolf]

from my pinned wood topic
Green wood. Not recommended.
Live wood or recently chopped wood is best avoided. It will still contain sugars and starches and as these start to breakdown, the free oxygen in the water will be reduced. It may also contain toxins (which are the trees natural defence) and/or parasites.

 

[nmonks]

Won't really disagree with The-Wolf, but I'll add three observations:

I recently put some wood from a local stream into my aquarium, and my Panaque nigrolineatus went bananas! She couldn't get enough of the stuff, and literally stripped the bark and green wood away overnight. She loved it. So, if you have a wood-eating catfish, it's certainly something worth trying. Panaque spp. will eat the wood faster than it can rot, so no risk to the aquarium. The only downside is that Panaque spp. produce masses of faeces when they have fresh wood to eat, and it is literally a case of siphoning out sawdust every morning or your tank becomes filled with the stuff floating in the water. Not pretty.

Years ago I did something similar in a brackish water tank, and the wood quickly went mouldy. But the scats loved the mold and spent all day nibbling at the stuff. So again, quite possibly worth trying.

Third experience is this. I put wood from the garden in to a tank, and all the fish died save the Panaque and a bichir (both of which can breathe air). Unknown to me, someone else had sprayed the wood that year with insecticide.

So select wood with care, ideally from the "wild" rather than a garden.

Cheers, Neale

from my pinned wood topic
Green wood. Not recommended.
Live wood or recently chopped wood is best avoided. It will still contain sugars and starches and as these start to breakdown, the free oxygen in the water will be reduced. It may also contain toxins (which are the trees natural defence) and/or parasites.

 

[The-Wolf]

the info from my topic was gained from several sources on the net and if memory
serves me well, none of those sources stated they were based on personal experiance unlike yours Neale.

I personally will stick to bogwood and mopani but of course other people are free to do what they wish.
anyone useing different woods and find they have had no adverse effects could you please let me know and I'll happily edit my pinned topic.

knowlage is one thing, experiance is another

 

[n3ont3tra]

Thank you Neale and The-Wolf for your comments. I still think I'll wait for it to dry out a bit - it's going with otos shrimp and hatchets so I don't think they'll particularly like wood.

 

[cjc75]

My older brother... (who knows nothing about aquariums, nor anything about types of wood) used to have a 10gal Tank with some gold fish and Tetra's... he picked up a neat little stick he found in the woods one day while walking his dog, and put it in the tank.

Nothing ever happened to his water; or his fish...

10 years later... I've been using the exact same stick in my 39gal tank...

It's a great decoration; and every Pleco that I've ever had, has absolutely loved it. It's been nibbled down to nearly half its original width; down to almost a brittle little twig and I now have to be very careful with it, when cleaning the tank. I'm almost afraid to take it out of the water for any significant amount of time, because I know it'll dry out quick and whatever is left of it will just snap and crumple away. So I've never taken it out of water... even the last time I had to move, it went into the big bucket of water that I used to transport all my fish.

It's never caused a problem in any of the tanks its ever been in, and its never caused any problems to any of the fish!

It's an awesome decoration; got jst the right curve to lay over the rocks...

Now, granted... I do not know what sort of condition it was in when my brother originally found it and stuck it into his first tank... I just know it never caused him any problems.

 

[Captain Retardo]

Also, that's an awful lot of fish for a 29 gallon tank, probably 70" of fish. Do you not have problems with your water parameters?

It's not overstocked, he just has a bunch of small fish, mostly tetras, not a whole lot of load on the filter. The inch rule sucks IMO.

I got some wood for my 29 gallon for $13 at my LFS, it was a perfect size, it was called Malaysian Driftwood. I know thats a bit expensive for wood (I'm pretty strapped for cash right now), but I would rather be safe than sorry.

 

[rdd1952]

Also, that's an awful lot of fish for a 29 gallon tank, probably 70" of fish. Do you not have problems with your water parameters?

It's not overstocked, he just has a bunch of small fish, mostly tetras, not a whole lot of load on the filter. The inch rule sucks IMO.

Forget the inch rule. That's 38 to 41 fish in a 29 gallon tank. That's a lot, period.