my LFS sold me some grape vine for my 85 gallon planted tank. a 60 dollar piece at that. now i am hearing it will rott away in the tank, is that true? it has been sand blasted and heat treated but i dont know if that makes any difference. if any one out there has a clue, please help before I make a mold mansion for my guppies! thanks
*Nick
I have three peices of this stuff that I got in a package at petsmart. Two of the peices are perfectly fine, never any strange growths, no decay in the water. One grows this very interesting white fluff on it, looks like some kind of fungus or something, but my guppies are keeping it spotless, so I don't even see it most of the time. I don't know how a big peice will do, but I know that I had a hell of a time getting mine to sink, so you may have a difficult time getting a peice that big to stay down. Hopefully some other people will chime in with success or problems with grape vine to generate a consensus.
everythign I've read says stay away from grape vine... the white fluff is a bacterial infection no doubt, and can spread. don't know if it's good or bad for the fish...
I'd be a little concerned with using grape wood in an aquatic environment. I have a piece in my orchid vivarium (warm, very high humidity, and the grape wood is close enough to the waterfall that it's always wet) that was absolutely covered in mold for a couple of weeks. The mold has mostly, but not completely, faded. I'm not sure if it will eventually go away or not, but I've covered it with moss. It's really unfortunate that it doesn't seem to work well in wet environments, because it's really hard to find wood with such interesting shapes.
Grapevine is NOT suitable for the aquatic environment.. it WILL rot and grow large amounts of fungus that will not go away as seen in typical driftwood setups. i urge you to return it so as to not waste your 60 dollars, because it is useless to you unless you have a dry environment to display it in.
