driftwood

Also, wood from the beach tends to have a lot of salt and aquired "seasoning" from the ocean so I wouldn't use it. As to putting wood in a 10g, I have a piece in mine with my Kuhlis who all love it. You don't have to boil it or soak it to place it in the tank though it does help reduce the tannins. They won't go away completely even with regular water changes but eventually they won't be noticable at all.
 
also, running fresh carbon in your filter when you first add the driftwood will help pull tannins out of the water as well.
 
It will but it will also pull nutrients out of the water as well. I only use it for removing medication myself.
 
Why are people so afraid of using found pieces of driftwood?

I keep hearing people say that salt from the beach would be harmful or that you don't know what kind of contaminants/pollutants could be in the wood. I just cannot believe that Malaysian wood is any less likely to come from a contaminated water source than the wood I find myself. And I certainly don't know what has been done to the wood to treat it before it arrives at a fish store.

For instance, a piece of wood found on the beach may be saturated with salt, but that is nothing that cannot be removed by simple rinsing and soaking.

Every single piece of driftwood in my aquariums has been found and cleaned and prepared by myself without any problem whatsoever. I am very picky and only choose wood that has been submerged for a long time.
 
It might be that you're very picky and choosey you haven't gotten anything off the wood. Others might not be so cautious. Wood from a beach is not the same as wood from a bog, swamp, lake, etc. other freshwater source. There's just too much risk IMO to take wood from a beach and use it. The oceans tend to be more polluted than freshwater sources too as everyone dumps in the oceans.
 
I have a great piece of drift wood from the beach (ocean beach, not a lake beach). It has a all sorts of gaps and holes that the fish swim through, haven't had any problems, and it hasn't made any noticable change in my water color. I haven't seen a piece of drift wood in a store that can match the stuff I have found on my own.

I boiled it for about an hour, then soaked it in a tub for two weeks and changed the water every day.
 
Tannins are harmless to fish. They're just one of the chemicals that wood leaches out as it soaks in water.
 
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