Wood for tanks?

[Sara1210, posts: 29]

Hi everyone,

This has probably been asked loads before but can I use wood from the forest in my tank or is there a reason we buy it from the shops?
Obviously I'd soak it first but just wondering if its the same kind of wood or if it will just fall apart?

[sidguppy, posts: 3827]

the reason why we do not use forest wood is that bogwood has been 'preserved' by acids for millenia.

it''s fairly to say that true bogwood is wood on it's way to become a fossil.

as a result, it merely falls apart (or gets eaten by pleco's) but it doesn't pollute the tank

fresh wood however rots

and rotting fouls the water badly, making it unhealthy for fish

now some fresh woods rot very very slowly; these are the ones we call 'hard woods" for that reason.
they are also very hard and difficult to use, you'd need more muscle- or toolpower.
these are to a certain degree useable for tanks.
common and useful hardwoods include beech, oak and fruit trees (cherry, apple, pear).

a few other hardwoods are tropical; like mangrove (available in the shops) and mopani (a very hard wood)


apart from those, most 'fresh forest' woods are best avoided!
anything from the connifer family is unusable: pine, larks, sequoia, xmas tree etc. all these contain turpentine or similar chemicals, which are bad for fish.

walnut and trees from the almond family (including apricot and peach!) are quite toxic and a piece of wood from these will kill all the fish in a short time

soft woods like willow, birch and the like are harmless, but they rot fast and pollute the tank.

rotting process uses a LOT of oxygen (the bacteria needed for rotting gobble it up), it also creates a LOT of nutriets on which massive algae blooms can grow.
we don't want that in our tanks

that's why we go to the shop or to the nearest peat-bog to get our wood

[Jools]

Bogwood from fish stores is safe, a little expensive and some colour the water. However it has often never been anywhere near a bog, Mopani wood for example.

However, I use collected wood for most of my tanks. I avoid conifers as the wood is very hard to waterlog and apparently has nastier resins or something that I don't really have facts on but have just avoided. Best woods I find are beech, apple, hawthorn and privet hedge. I tend to use wood that I find in rivers, but I also have used wood freshly cut from the garden.

Fresh wood will tend to grow fungus and make the water smell bad (but not stagnant - it's a different, riper smell). This can cloud the water, however, water params remain OK and the fish love it, things like Crossocheilus, Panaque and many barbs, Garra, livebearers (Swordtails in my case) all pick away at the gunk from fresh wood. Eventually it sinks (usually I tie it down or wedge it in).

All unidentified collected wood is "tested" in an outside waterbutt that has a lot of insect life and my test pilot goldfish.

I will post below a picture of a tank will "all collected" wood.

Cheers,

Jools

[Jools]

Mystus tank.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[MatsP]

I've been using birch branches (twice, whilst walking to my house, I've found fairly large branches of birch laying on the roadside after it's been cut from a tree).

I also have apple, cherry, oak and willow in my tanks.

--
Mats

[Shane]

Tank below is all oak branches from my backyard. They were soaked in an empty tank for three months before I added them. There is a little chance of rot as the tank's population is mostly loricariids and they are eating the wood much faster than it could rot.
I do agree with Sid's advice to buy wood, however, if you are unfamiliar with telling apart trees.

-Shane

[dw1305, posts: 330]

Hi all,
I'm happy to use any non-toxic wood, and bog-wood certainly rots least, but any wood, even green wood, is at least 90% dead and not very polluting, it can't be, it doesn't have enough of the sugars and proteins that feed rapid bacterial growth, or algal blooms.

It is only the cambial layer, the layer of cells between bark and wood, that is alive in a tree, all the other tissues are made of structural carbohydrates, lignins etc. and these are basically dead, inert and insoluble. In fact wood can only conduct water once it is lignified "The crosslinking of polysaccharides by lignin is an obstacle for water absorption to the cell wall. Thus, lignin makes it possible for the plant's vascular tissue to conduct water efficiently.".

A growing tree is like a "living sarcophagus", a thin green shroud of living, dividing cambium surrounded on out-side and in-side by dead bark and dead wood.

Some non-directly woody BOD bits
I use the reduction of BOD (Biochemical Oxygen Demand) concept for tank water management, rather than saying something is "good" or "bad", you look at each item in terms of what nutrients it contains, how readily available they are, and how much effect it will have on BOD. A slice of sweet potato, or a prawn, will have much more potential to pollute than a much, much larger piece of wood, this is because they have readily available, soluble sugars and protein, that the wood doesn't, and therefore a higher BOD.

If you understand the processes that effect aeration and dissolved oxygen levels in the aquarium, it allows you to make educated guesses about what is likely to cause problems and why.

Where woody debris (of any type) can be a problem is where it ends up in a canister filter, slows flow speed and reduces dissolved oxygen. "How to keep eaten wood from polluting your tank?" <http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=32037&hilit=+BOD> and "higher temps/oxygenation levels" <http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=33883&hilit=+BOD>

There are some more dissolved oxygen bits here "L200 Death, Any ideas to cause?": <http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=33940>

cheers Darrel

[Jools]

Hi all,
I'm happy to use any non-toxic wood, and bog-wood certainly rots least, but any wood, even green wood, is at least 90% dead and not very polluting, it can't be, it doesn't have enough of the sugars and proteins that feed rapid bacterial growth, or algal blooms.

It is only the cambial layer, the layer of cells between bark and wood, that is alive in a tree, all the other tissues are made of structural carbohydrates, lignins etc. and these are basically dead, inert and insoluble. In fact wood can only conduct water once it is lignified "The crosslinking of polysaccharides by lignin is an obstacle for water absorption to the cell wall. Thus, lignin makes it possible for the plant's vascular tissue to conduct water efficiently.".

A growing tree is like a "living sarcophagus", a thin green shroud of living, dividing cambium surrounded on out-side and in-side by dead bark and dead wood.

Some non-directly woody BOD bits
I use the reduction of BOD (Biochemical Oxygen Demand) concept for tank water management, rather than saying something is "good" or "bad", you look at each item in terms of what nutrients it contains, how readily available they are, and how much effect it will have on BOD. A slice of sweet potato, or a prawn, will have much more potential to pollute than a much, much larger piece of wood, this is because they have readily available, soluble sugars and protein, that the wood doesn't, and therefore a higher BOD.

If you understand the processes that effect aeration and dissolved oxygen levels in the aquarium, it allows you to make educated guesses about what is likely to cause problems and why.

Where woody debris (of any type) can be a problem is where it ends up in a canister filter, slows flow speed and reduces dissolved oxygen. "How to keep eaten wood from polluting your tank?" <http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=32037&hilit=+BOD> and "higher temps/oxygenation levels" <http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=33883&hilit=+BOD>

There are some more dissolved oxygen bits here "L200 Death, Any ideas to cause?": <http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=33940>

cheers Darrel

Post of the week. It explains something I've been able to "gut explain" in terms of just knowing what I can put into a tank without disaster or otherwise. BOD is a new concept to me but I already understand it clearly from experience.

Jools
PS Mmmm. Strawberry I think.

[dw1305, posts: 330]

Hi all,
The only real problem with using BOD, is that we can't actually measure it outside of the lab., and even then people tend to use 5 day BOD (and a biotic index for streams etc), rather than the complete BOD measurement.

Oxidation-reduction Potential (ORP) or Reduction-Oxidation Potential (REDOX) <http://theaquariumwiki.com/Redox> was used a bit by the Reef keepers, and tries to quantify some of the same sort of reactions, but has fallen out of favour. Partially this was because there isn't a single value you want or can maintain, but rather a balance between the oxidation and reduction reactions. It is just too chemical and complicated, but if you use:

rather than saying something is "good" or "bad", you look at each item in terms of what nutrients it contains, how readily available they are, and how much effect it will have on BOD. A slice of sweet potato, or a prawn, will have much more potential to pollute than a much, much larger piece of wood, this is because they have readily available, soluble sugars and protein, that the wood doesn't, and therefore a higher BOD.

it all becomes much more handleable.

After that I'm not really a fish keeper as such, I think about the dimensions of the tank and water parameters, find some fish that might breed naturally (if they are happy) and let them get on with it. I don't tend to worry too much about any measurements, although I do occasionally measure conductivity, but I just try and ensure that dissolved oxygen levels remain high at all times, and that I don't get anywhere near the theoretical stocking limit for a tank.

As I always have plants, because of their beneficial effects on water quality, I then use the "duckweed index" <http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=26791&start=20> as a quick visual estimation of water quality and nitrate level.

cheers Darrel

[comusgoogle, posts: 1]

I've been using birch branches (twice, whilst walking to my house, I've found fairly large branches of birch laying on the roadside after it's been cut from a tree).

I also have apple, cherry, oak and willow in my tanks. Mats

hmm that's great...keep share this around the web dude.