Buying driftwood from petco/petsmart?

Bob, store-bought or not, you still need to boil the driftwood unless it's coming out of a tank pre-seasoned so to speak. Even then you should quarantine it.

FWIW, I picked up a small chunk of mopani a few months ago from my LFS for my 10g for $5. I brought it to a boil 5x and it still made tea water out of the tank for weeks.
 
Yeah, the little bit of carbon in the penguin "right size-A" cartridge barely touched it, but to be fair, it wasn't a brand-new cartridge.
 
i let it soak over night. before i went to bed, i changed the water out a few times. the first two times i used boiling water. overnight just lukewarm. the water was slightly tea colored when i woke up. before i ran errands, i changed it out again and when i got home, it was tea colored, but less than slightly...so i put it in my tank, and i am expecting it to not do too much discoloration.
 
in all likelyhood the carbon would exhaust way before the tannins drop off.
the slime you see on wood is a fungus..it is not harmful to the inhabitants and is part of the decay process..it is actually the start of decay. btw, goldfish love the stuff.
on new driftwood I use 1/4 cup bleach to the bucket (5 gallons)..it does not take much bleach to kill of the nasties..if you like you can also use h2o2(hydrogen peroxide) it is an oxidizer and will also.... kill off the nasties. it, like bleach, will break down over time.. by product for h2o2....h2o and o
 
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