Driftwood Questions

[Claire]

Hi all,

I'm looking at getting a few boxes of driftwood posted over to me from the north-east coast, but had a couple of questions regarding scaping with it.

Obviously I will need to soak it for a while first, which isn't an issue as I never use my bath, always take showers in the en-suite, so it can sit in there as long as it likes. Question is though, should I add anything to the water to help sterilise it? Bearing in mind that it's only been picked off a beach and given a quick dust down before coming to me.

I have read that it will take a couple of weeks to become waterlogged and sink which is fine as it will be soaking anyways. I am presuming I will need to do "water changes" in the bath to take out any salt which is leaching out too.

The other thing I was wondering with wood scaping in general is how you manage to keep hardscape from "sinking" in time. I.e., when using individual branches in an aquascape, how do you manage to arrange them to keep them where you want them so that if you touch them they don't fall out of the substrate and create one mighty mess? I wondered about trying to prop them up with rocks or something, but not really sure how that would work in theory. My substrate is also not as "sticky" as some - I am using cat litter in this tank and find it is not as good at holding plants as the likes of the aqua soils, so don't know if that's a factor? I have always used either big chunky flat-bottomed pieces of wood or heather which is really skinny to avoid this dilemma!

Any advice, videos, pictures or whatever would be gratefully received!

 

[Vinkenoog1977]

Well, I usually soak them for 24 hours with a little bit of salt, but since this is from a beach, I doubt adding salt would be necessary. After the first 24 hours, I give the pieces of wood a thorough scrubbing to get the debris and muck out of the nooks and crannies; this also helps with getting rid of any tannins, I have found. After that, it goes back into a bucket of HOT water, and I just change the water every 24 hours. I keep doing this untill the water stays clear, so no more tannins, and I no longer find any solids in the bucket.
As far as soaking-to-sink; this could take anywhere from 1 day to 1 year, depending on size and wood variety. In that case, as soon as the water has no more tannins in it, I just leave it in th bucket, with a lid on top; with a bath tub, you might need to get creative. Another solution, and this one can also help with keeping the wood in place in the tank, is to glue some rocks onto the wood in the spots where the wood will touch the substrate; just bury the stones in the substrate, on no one will ever know.
Propping it up with rocks is another good solution; not only does it keep everything in place, it also creates that natural look of roots growing where the rocks allow it to grow. The wood will still be rather unstable though, so you would also need to use some rock to secure the wood, i.e., placing rocks on or around the wood. There are some good examples in this video Amano recently did.

Around the 1:30 mark.

 

[Lindy]

I cable/zip tie to slate usually, with the slate hidden beneath the substrate.

 

[James D]

I found a bit of slate that fell off the outhouse roof, drilled a hole in it and screwed it to a problem piece of wood (and used a big washer).

I imagine you'd be fine soaking it for a few weeks with the odd water change, boiling it might help but I don't think it's necessary and most of us use wood that's far to big to fit in a saucepan!