# How long does it take for driftwood to sink?



## cliner (Feb 17, 2006)

Every peice is different. I bought a piece of driftwood on slate, added to my aquarium, weighted it down, and after 18 months, it still floated.


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## Rex Grigg (Dec 10, 2002)

True driftwood will rarely sink. That's why it's called drift wood.

At some point in the past the change was made from using Bog Wood (wood submerged in a bog or other body of water till the softer parts had decayed away and the wood was waterlogged) to driftwood. 

Some wood will never sink. I know of logs that have been floating for almost 100 years. And they have weight on them (floating home). Other wood will never float in water.


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## Hoppy (Dec 24, 2005)

Many very old logs have sunk in lakes where they got away from the crew floating them to a saw mill, many years ago. When those logs are recovered today, the wood is still salvagable and just as beautiful as it originally was. I haven't figured out how this works. As Rex said, wood should float until enough of it rots away for the density of the wood/water to be greater than water. Of course some woods are almost as dense as water all the time, and a few are more dense. I'm not clear about what happens when we soak a piece of wood for our tanks until it sinks.


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## Hop (Mar 27, 2004)

I have one that is still boyant after nearly a decade of being submerged... Others stay submerged after a few months. So the official answer is it depends


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