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I found a nice piece of cedar driftwood on a saltwater beach and have had it soaking for a week and a half. I've been scrubbing it with a clean toothbrush, and the tannin leaching from it seems to be diminishing. I did a search and read most of the posts about driftwood on the site. From what I gathered, cedar is not the best choice, but should be ok.

Is boiling really necessary?


debra

I split off this post from the parent topic as it is a fairly general question and not specific to Glass Cats. I would recommend boilding for two reasons.

a) If the wood is from saltwater then boiling it will quickly remove any salt from the wood as long as you pour out the boilding water and reboil serveral times.

b) Boiling will kill most thing in the wood and soaking or brushing will not.

Also, I wouldn't wory too much about the tannins, many fish will benefit from a degree of leaching from the wood. I would include glass cats in that group.

Hope this helps,

Jools

Jools~

I thought the 4th of July fireworks had blinded me when I didn't see my post where I had left it! ...but thank you...

Those are excellent reasons for boiling that I hadn't thought of!


debra

the one drawbak to boiling is that most often pieces of bogwood do not fit in any kettle or cauldron.....

you have to find a bunch of druids or witches with a huge, big one and an open fire to boil that treetrunk!

sid, that tree trunk looked a lot smaller on the beach!

...easy for Jools to say, boil it several times! ...but I've grown quite fond of my glass catfish and it will be worth it to seek out a witch who has an empty cauldron!


debra

I boiled my driftwood! I used a *corn pot* (large white kettle) and set it on the extra burner on the BBQ. I boiled one end, turned it over and boiled the other end, then repeated with new water. I hope twice is enough?

I haven't put it in the tank yet; any hints on how to secure it? Will the substrate be enough to hold it down? I'm not sure yet if it will be sand or gravel.


debra

I agree that boiling is the right way to do. I also encounter problem of the wood being too big to soak inside the pail, so what i did was to boil the water first and then pour them over the driftwood several times. Yes much more tedious work but hey at least its boiling water treatment.

any hints on how to secure it?

If it's heavy enough, the weight alone will do.

polkadot~ I'll keep that in mind for next time... I had a 5g plastic bucket but thought better of putting it on the barbie ...

Cool, Heok Hee, but it doesn't seem very heavy... once I set up the tank I will know


debra

The driftwood did float, but I managed to secure it with plastic tie-wraps to a piece of slate, and all was well. However a month or two ago it started disintegrating into tiny splinters and had to be removed. I was really surprised as initially it had the density of rock, but there you go...

I enjoyed the natural tanin look while it lasted... *sigh*
debra

One of the major drawbacks of cedar is that unless it is kept in extremley cold water it turns punky quite quickly and disintegrates. I was just at a the strangest manmade lake that is essentially a flooded valley. The water was low and there were huge gnarled cedar stumps everywhere. I made a close inspection of a few stumps and found that they were relativley intact even after 50+ years of being submerged; however, the ones further up the shore that would be exposed to warmer water or out of the water more freqently were significantly more decayed. Cedar roots tend to be much more dense and don't decompose as quickly, although cedar may contain some harmful chemicals that are used as natural defense compounds, (against bugs and even other plants).

This may be thoroughly impractical, but it works for me. I purchased some of the 5 gallon orange buckets from Home Depot with the covers. The covers are important. A plastic lid lifter is also important, since these covers have gaskets that seal with the heat. This size holds abour 2 medium pieces of driftwood appx.12" long.

1. Boil a lot of water. If you have four burners on your stove, use all four. I usually wait until I have the house to myself.

2. I do a dry scrubbing of the driftwood. I like to first use coarse sand paper to loosen any pieces that need to come out. Then a second scrubbing with finer sandpaper to get rid of any odd splinters. The last scrubbing, before boiling, is with a regular filter brush, to get any loose particles.

3. Usually, by the time I'm done scrubbing, the water's come to a boil. It needs to be a full boil. Place the driftwood in the bucket, pour in water until 90% submerged and cover with the lid. I can't lift much, so where I place the bucket is where it stays. Seal the lid. Leave it for 24 hours.

4. Repeat the procedure again in 24 hours. I do this 2 or 3 times until funky things cease to fall from the driftwood. Everytime you scrub, something new usually comes out. One piece I was scrubbing turned out to be loaded with some kind of snail. I didn't continue with that one, but the catalog place sent me a replacement. It's a true pain in the butt. I've found the driftwood requires a lot less maintenence when I do this.

That's pretty fascinating about the cedar natebug... I imagine I'm lucky that the catfish didn't suffer any ill effects...

Bronzefry, thanks for the tips. They sound a lot easier than the methods I tried! Good driftwood appears to be difficult to come by...


debra

Besides saltwater beaches, I have found river/streambanks to be excellent places to find suitable driftwood. As I elluded to earlier, the denser the better in my opinion, its less likley to float and lasts longer.

Natebug...haha

A "cheat" for cleaning driftwood (if your spouse is not at home) is to just run it through the dishwasher, without soap of course. This is as good or better than boiling and a pretty good size piece can fit in there. After the dish washer, rinse the wood well and leave it in a bucket to soak a while.
-Shane

I love that idea, Shane...

natefrog~ what was I thinking?
I guess I wasn't! ...sorry...


debra