Twisted mess!

[engineguy129]

Hi all,
Alright I attached a picture of the driftwood I scoped yesterday, as you can see I have started to clean it up (have quite a ways to go)! beisdes lopping off all the sharp twigs and removing most of the bark I was going to dump boiling water on it a section at a time to rid of any possible critters. I did find this in a snag out of the water from a previous flood. Hopefully I can clean it up enough without destoying its natrual............weirdness. I have been told it may not be a good idea to use this in a discus tank..............they said you should not have a planted discus tank as well...............ah defiance...............well not really difiance just because they say it may not be a "go" kinda fuels me enough to clean it up nice and prove em wrong (not to the point I jeopadize my fish) plus I think the discus will like it as well plent o spaces to hide...........please lemme know if I am off my rocker or their is no grain in the silo............or just advice. Tanx again..................I still have a few months before I make the plunge and buy everything..............kinda just getting my stuff together.............................peace........ .........Rob

[Ralph]

Yea, you might want to clean that up a bit. That is a wild looking piece of wood. I went out on our local river to do the same thing, find a large piece of driftwood but was attacked by some horses, so I ended up buying five small pieces at the LFS. I keep moving them around but still haven't got the right look.
My general feeling on planted tanks: there are so many intelligent people on this forum with so many years experience with discus, it just seems that we can come up with a way to make this happen, safely. Especially since almost all new discus keepers want to have a planted tank. I know of few things more amazing than a group of wild strain discus swimming through the plants and driftwood of a large aquarium.

I am withholding any opinions on your sanity, pending further information.

[Richman]

I have a large piece of driftwood (not quite as large or wild as yours) that was washed out of my creek by a local flood several years ago. Kept it as a sort of doorstop for a long time. Back in April, I attached suction cups to the bottom and put it in one of my big tanks. Discus have been making their home in it for several months now with no problem. One thing I have noticed is that the top part of it seems to be turning real dark as if it is starting to deterioriate. Wondering if it is some sort of rot caused by greater oxygen concentration at the top of the water???? Don't know about those things. Just a guess. It is actually an old stump and the "limbs" are made up of the root system. I didn't treat mine, but it had set up and dried out in my house for several years. I think one of the uncertainties of this kind of wood is that you never know exactly what kind of wood it is. Is it possible that different woods may cause a different reaction in the water? I would try it out with smaller and cheaper fish for a while before putting discus in the tank with it. Good luck. Looks like an awesome piece of wood.

[engineguy129]

Thanx for the info!! I spent about an hour on it prior to chow time.............I still have a lot of work to do in it............there seems to be a few section that are rotted I am removing as I go...........it is quite the "different" looking piece of wood, it is pretty much dried out. I will have to chop it down to size a little. The reason I grabbed it was that it did look like a old root system..........I remeber reading about Discus in the wild like to hide/hangout in the roots of old submerged trees to make it difficult for predators to get to them........hopefully I can work on this for a while and make something kinda pleasing to the eye and to the fish..........sorry at times I get a little over-exuberant.........damn mountain dew!
thanx again!!!!

[ronrca]

Wow! That is some interesting driftwood! I bet it would look great in a planted tank. Keep cleaning it and use boiling water. It will be worth the effort.

I'll have to get a pic of my tree trunk. Its pretty big, maybe not quite that big, but big!

Thanks for the pic! ;)

[vosevichs]

That's a nice piece of wood. How come I can never find a piece like that? :( All I find is twigs. I'm trying to make my tank look as wild as possible. All I need now is a piece of wood like that. Then I'm going to put half a dozen Blue Heckels in it.

A friend of mine boils his wood in a 55 gal. drum.