# How long do you boil driftwood?



## EricSilver (Feb 23, 2004)

When you say, "your own" driftwood, I assume you mean wood you found on a beach? 

If your goal is to sterilize it, baking (at about 300 degrees) for an hour or two might be a faster and more effective alternative to boiling. It will destroy (and dessicate) any living organism(s) in the wood, and release any volatile chemicals. 

If your goal is to leach out tannins, then simply soaking it in a bucket of water will suffice.


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## bigpow (May 24, 2004)

won't you torch the thing at 300 deg.?
I went as high as 200 deg. last time and I saw heavy smoke coming out from my oven...

I'd stick with boiling
or if it's really big, dishwasher without soap


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## Rex Grigg (Dec 10, 2002)

My thoughts on driftwood can be found in this thread http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/showthread.php?t=9464&highlight=driftwood


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## EricSilver (Feb 23, 2004)

bigpow said:


> won't you torch the thing at 300 deg.?
> I went as high as 200 deg. last time and I saw heavy smoke coming out from my oven...
> 
> I'd stick with boiling
> or if it's really big, dishwasher without soap



No, it wont torch it since wood does not begin to burn until it reaches about 540 degrees. At 200 degrees -- which is lower than the boiling point of water (212 degrees) -- there should be no smoking at all. At most, very volatile chemical residues may vaporize, but will not smoke/burn from combustion. 




Rex Grigg said:


> My thoughts on driftwood can be found in this thread http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/showthread.php?t=9464&highlight=driftwood


Good points. Even my fairly dense, store-bought driftwood is weighed down by large, heavy pieces of slate. After 6 months in the tank, they are STILL not water logged and would float cheerfully to the surface if I detached them from the slate.  




lamthuyduong said:


> ARe there any other methods of treating your own driftwood?


Are you treating it to disinfect, drive out tannis, or saturate?


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## Buck (Oct 13, 2002)

How do you really feel about *Driftwood* Rex ?

:hihi:

All I have ever done is boiled my wood. roud:


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## Ackar (Aug 22, 2004)

But what about petrified wood?

It doesn't leak organics, but it is a huge chunk of minerals. Do they affect water chemistry much?


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## Rex Grigg (Dec 10, 2002)

Petrified wood can contain calcite that can and will affect water chemistry.


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## Robert H (Apr 3, 2003)

Well if you want to get really technical Rex, the african "Swahala wood" two toned color comes from the desert and has never been in water. So what would you call that?

The term bogwood originaly meant wood taken from peat bogs. This wood can be thousands of years old and perfectly preserved. Most of this is in Europe. Scotland has some famous bogs. However, true "bogwood" rarely makes its way to the USA. 

Wood is also pulled from swamps, which is like a bog, but different. Various people on the internet pull Cypress wood from swamps in Florida, Louisiana, and so forth. People like aquariumdriftwood and Florida driftwood. But this is not true bogwood in the true sense, and it does float. A few years ago I bought a big box of wood from aquariumdriftwood.com. It was sent wrapped in wet newspaper to keep it wet, but I let it sit around for a couple weeks and it got all dried out. It floated and never sank. I soaked some of it for 3 months and it still never sank. I finaly stuck it in my outdoor garden.


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## Rex Grigg (Dec 10, 2002)

The African wood is usually dense enough it sinks. There are some woods that are naturally dense enough to sink. There are other woods that you can boil forever and they will never sink. I know people who have floating homes on old growth Douglas Fir trunks that have been submerged for almost 100 years and they have yet to sink.

Bog wood sound so much better than swamp wood. The basic idea is a wood that a hardwood that has been submerged, has had the softer parts rotted off and sinks. Driftwood out here on the left coast usually doesn't meet any of the three of those points.


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## aquaverde (Apr 15, 2003)

I have a piece of the Florida driftwood. It is going on it's second year without sinking. Thank God for slate.


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