Adding terranium wood

[Mr. Fishy]

Fish store drift wood is kinda expensive... So I did some searching and I found out that...

I have some old drift wood looking pieces of wood that I had in an old land hermit crab tank.

I was wondering if I could use it in my tank?
Like would there be some diseases on it? Haha I dont know. Im just asking.

I grabbed a cool piece and put it in an old 1/2 gal fish bowl with hot water and it floated and so far the water is clear... So I will see by morning if its good or not...

Any suggestions..?

 

[Whiskers]

my only thought would be that, if its small enough to put into a 1/2 gal bowl, you could drop it into a large pot of boiling water. that might have a little better effect than just hot tap water.

 

[Mr. Fishy]

Will it mess up my pot? Because I dont have any old ones just one set of nice pots and pans.

 

[Mr. Fishy]

this morning half was sunken and the other half was trying to float. the water was yellow so I emptied it and refilled and put floating down at bottom. Going to see what happens after school.

 

[brian1973]

that wood should be safe, as whiskers pointed out I would probably boil it to make sure, you can purchase a cheap pot from walmart if you needed to, i purchase all most all of my driftwood from the reptile section of petsmart it is far cheaper than the wood marketed for aquariums found in most LFS around town.

 

[ValRasbora]

apparantly you should never put drift wood from the beach in a tank, as it could decay. Maybe that's why the water was yellow!

 

[DesignsOnYou]

Actually, driftwood just naturally releases tannins that can dye the water to a yellow/tea color. It's nothing to worry about, and can happen even with wood that you buy at the store. I boiled mine and then soaked it for a couple days before putting it in my tank. After a couple weeks it started leeching tannins, but a water change and adding some carbon has cured it.

 

[OrangeCones]

apparantly you should never put drift wood from the beach in a tank, as it could decay.

Nothing wrong with water that has washed ashore onto the beach. ALL wood decays eventually.