What kind of driftwood do I have?

[Aj21]

I was walking in my local park and found a really nice piece of driftwood along the bank but I want to make sure it’s safe to use and not toxic. Can someone help me identify what kind it is?

 

[Colin_T]

Hi and welcome to the forum

The wood could be anything. If you got it from a pet shop, it should be safe to use. However, wood from pet shops is sometimes infected with a bad fungus that can kill things in the aquarium. Unfortunately there's no way of telling what fungus the wood contains until the fungus grows. Your best bet is to soak the wood in a container of water outside. Leave it for a month or so and change the water in the container at least once a week. Hose any white slime off the wood, if it grows any. When the wood has sunk and no longer produces slime, then put the wood in the tank.

 

[ADsnail]

You'll find lots of conflicting advice about how to prep driftwood for a tank: boil, don't boil; soak, don't soak; give it 12 hours in water vs. one week; bake it, or don't bake it; it'll sink right away vs. may take a month. There have been a number of threads in the past on this site detailing these differences.

I don't know what type of wood it is, but there are online lists of safe/unsafe trees for aquarium use. All I can offer is my own experience:

I picked up a nice piece of dead wood from under the oak tree in my yard. Oak trees are on the safe list. Finding conflicting information online, I opted for the most rigorous preparation covering all the advice. I boiled it all day, dried it in the sun for 10 blistering summer days, baked it for a couple of hours. I did all I could do, I figured. Put it in the tank and within days there was hair growing on it and a riotous mosquito population blooming.

How could all that have survived the boiling, baking, and time? I have no idea. But my next step was to toss it out, clean the tank, and buy driftwood from a LFS. Zero problems followed and it's still in there today, two years later. Not everyone will have this experience, but I guess you can consider mine a worst-case scenario.

 

[Joe_D]

Personally, I boil all wood no matter where I get it from for two main reasons.

1) To kill anything that might still be living in it.
2) To make sure all tannin is boiled out of it so it does not turn the aquarium water brown .
So I keep boiling it, changing the water, until it no longer tuns the water brown when boiling
.
BTW, it you did nor have the tank covered, more or less sealed when out in the sun that could explain it.
As Jeff Goldblum said in a famous movie "Life finds a way" (to exist).

 

[Colin_T]

If you boil driftwood, it causes it to break down faster. Boiling doesn't always stop tannins being released. Tannins (brown staining from driftwood) are released from all plant matter. Some plants release more than others.

For people boiling wood to kill things on it, if you let the wood dry there won't be anything on it that can survive in an aquarium, so no risk of disease transmission.

If you get fungus on wood after it's put in an aquarium, the fungus is in the water and is attacking the rotting wood.

If you use branches from the garden or bush, make sure they are completely dry before using them. Some trees release a sap that can be toxic to fish and letting the wood dry, helps stop the sap production.

Deciduous trees are normally safe for aquariums. Pine trees (conifers) are not safe. Avoid plants that are known to be poisonous.