Alternatives to driftwood

silvernes · Post by **silvernes** » 25 Oct 2004, 07:43

So I just read the lovely PC articles (I'm a little behing on my reading

and I'm shocked to hear that Commons need wood to chew

& I thought I was doing so well...

Would it be possible to add wood blocks like for hamsters or parrots to the tank for a temporary fix? I do have some driftwood 'reserved' with somone but the travel distance means I have to wait until they are able to swing into the city to have it droped off & as it has already been 2 weeks...

Yes I'm starting to look for another source

But I want good stuff for a big tank... anyway.

Would those wood blocks be an ok alternative for now?

As far as I know these plecos have never seen wood (had mine since 3" now 8" & a the new adoptee is from my driftwood guy he's about 7")

Nes.

Mika · Post by **Mika** » 25 Oct 2004, 07:50

Commons

What are these?

Hypostomus cochliodon-group and Panaque-group are the only families who needs wood for dinner table.

silvernes · Post by **silvernes** » 25 Oct 2004, 18:13

Pterygoplichthys pardalis

*phew* I must have just mixed up my speicies then

Just as a general question then - could regular un-treated wood be substituted for driftwood in a pinch then?

Nes.

MatsP · Post by **MatsP** » 26 Oct 2004, 09:46

silvernes wrote:Pterygoplichthys pardalis

*phew* I must have just mixed up my speicies then

Just as a general question then - could regular un-treated wood be substituted for driftwood in a pinch then?

Nes.

Yes and no.

I'm sure if you take the right kind of wood, it'll sink to the bottom of the tank. But it's also going to be relatively rich in various resins that you may not want to disolve in the water. The idea behind using driftwood that has already been in the water for a long period of time is that anything that may disolve into the water has already been washed away by the "soaking" it's had while it was in the lake/river where it was "drifting".

Obviously, treated wood could be a lot worse yet, because of the treatment it's had...

--
Mats

Manue · Post by **Manue** » 26 Oct 2004, 13:34

I agree with MatsP,i'm using oak wood that i'm taking in the mountain's rivers and sometime chesnut wood. I never use pine or any tree with resin or latex even if the wood seems whashed up by the river; But oak is my favorite, strong wood and the fishes like it. It's also important to boil it even if it's usually not easy due to the size of the wood

silvernes · Post by **silvernes** » 27 Oct 2004, 23:13

Ah so a dive in my local lake may be required...

Actually my cottage is on a very small lake in Northern Ontario (attached to a slighlty bigger lake be a series of canals so we have very little pollution). There is a fallen tree that's been under my dock for ages. I don't belive it provides much refuge to local fish because it's so large, in one peice and there are many other better spots close to it (including under my dock which is a hot-spot & great fishing

).

In removing a chunk of this tree - would I be able to use it in a fish tank? (probably not going to happen - I don't like touching mushy things

- but hypothetically). It's been there for at least 10 years, completely sumberged so it may just fall apart if I tried to move it, but it would be possible to burn/boil it because of huge fire-pit (we have a COTTAGE not a summer home

).

There are probably also some smaller peices I could find around my dock of sticks & such. I couldn't tell you what trees we have

. Kinda a mixture of northern ontario species all around the lake

a bit of everything.

I'm still not sure I would really want to remove anything from a lake though - for the most part fish hide under large natural rock caves & because the lake is so small it doesn't support alot of predatory fish so they just kinda swim around where they want (for instance we had a HUGE lake bass spawn swimming around the shallow end of our dock all summer). Is beach wood better for collection?

I was so tempted to take one of those bass-babies home

maybe next year...

Nes.

Manue · Post by **Manue** » 28 Oct 2004, 07:20

Is beach wood better for collection?

Do you mean beach from the ocean or beach from the lake (sorry about my english i don't even know if you can use the word beach for a lake

)
Anyway if it's from the lake ok but from the sea no because the salt. But i found a lot of larvaes and others small animals in the wood from quiet waters that you don't have in the strong currents of some rivers, also the risk of a pollution is lesser upstream from the river!

Manue

silvernes · Post by **silvernes** » 29 Oct 2004, 06:12

No problem, we do actually have quite a few beaches on our lake

At low tide in the fall the water is almost 3 feet below what it is in the spring.

Mmmmmm larva

I bet that'd make a nice treat! Is there anything in a lake that eating it could really hurt the fish though? I guess it would all be boiled away though

(no one say leaches... I HATE leaches

)

Nes.