Driftwood ID

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workfortheman

Aquarium Advice FINatic
Joined
Oct 14, 2004
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504
Location
Michigan
Hi all, just got back from Mexico last week and brought home some nice looking driftwood. Anyone seen this stuff or able to ID it? Is it safe for aquariums? I really hope so, because it's got sooooo many little cool holes in it!
TIA
 

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If it doesn't sink, you can drill a hole in it and connect it to a flat piece of stone. That way it won't float up. Bury the stone inb the gravel and nobody will know :wink: .
 
It will be save for the aquarium, just try to cook it out, to get the bacteria etc. off of it, that you don't want in your tank. It's some nice pieces. I know in Germany they call this kind of wood Mopani. Should be the same here.
I got it too in my tank.
 
Tiffi said:
I know in Germany they call this kind of wood Mopani. Should be the same here.

Not at all....Mopani (Colophospernum mopane) is an African Hardwood, what is pictured by workforthe man is the 'skeleton' of a cholla cactus (several species of the Opuntia genus, probably Opuntia versicolor in this case)...it will eventually sink, but will decompose shortly thereafter, and much more quickly than hardwood.
 
Thank you, Toirtis for the ID. I'm not suprised that it is cactus skeleton. Would you recommend for aquarium use? How fast would this decomposition occur?
 
Ptobably pretty quickly, once the skeleton was saturated and the tank bacteria got working on it. I have no actual timeline, as I have never observed it in an aquarium situation, but I have seen it break down within months in a humid reptile enclosure.
 
lol. . . I've thought about that already. But then, it's probably a bad idea to buy a reptile for the sake of showing off my cactus skeleton!
 
workfortheman said:
lol. . . I've thought about that already. But then, it's probably a bad idea to buy a reptile for the sake of showing off my cactus skeleton!

Bah...consider the cactus skeleton your first item towards getting that reptile that you have always wanted. :wink:
 
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