Can Driftwood carry disease?

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I have a bit of a dumb question to ask but lets say a piece of driftwood has been in a fish tank & the tank water contained parasites & harmfull bacteria to fish.

Then the driftwood was taken out of the tank & has been sitting out of the water for 3 months. It appears dry.

If the driftwood was placed in a healthy tank could it still contain the parasites or harmfull bacteria from the previous tank that could be passed on to the healthy fish in the new tank? even though it was out of the water for 3 months?
 
I think it is possible for some parasites to exist in a dormant state in driftwood for quite some time, but I don't have any science to back me up. If the driftwood came from a FW source, then I would boil it, or if it is too big to boil I would soak it in a very weak bleach solution or even a very heavy SW solution.
 
I had a tank with two goldfish....one goldfish died with dropsy symptoms...I treated the tank with antibiotics & I thought the other goldfish would be fine but it also got dropsy 3 months later. After that I decided to tear down the tank & bleach it. I am still afraid to use it or any of the decorations that were in there. lol
 
I don't know...I read somewhere that I should bake my gravel so I did & then I threw it away. It turned nasty. Want my $5 driftwood? lol.
 
I would take it to prove a point :wink: I think you are over doing the sterilizing! You could have used a gentle bleach solution to clean the entire tank and then rised everything.
I read up on dropsy and it seems to affect the weaker fish first. Goldfish are at the top of the list of fish that get dropsy. I would say that it has to do with the breeding of these goldfish. Remember, any fish with long, flowing fins will have less circulation and are more prone to disease. Your drift wood is fine, now go choose some new fish wisely :D
 
You mean I should have just bleached the gravel instead of baking it? I thought baking would be better then to pour a poisonous chemical over it & having to rinse it a hundred of times. What's the second fish on the "most likely to get dropsy" list?
 
Boiling the wood will do then leave the wood in clean water for couple of day.
As for bleaching, just leave it in a clean water with dechlor for couple of days too will be fine. Chlorine in water will evaporate.
 
Some gravel is epoxy coated, so boiling can have a deleterious effect, to say the least, but I can see the appeal. I have heard of people running it through the dishwasher, too, provided you have a mesh container that will hold it.

I think mollies or platies are second on the list for dropsy, but might be bettas. :wink:
 
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