hssea

I think I'm going to take a walk along the shore to see if I can find a piece of driftwood. I've got a fake piece of driftwood in my tank and more and more of the "paint is missing" everytime a take it out to clean it. Now it has a bunch of white spots on it. yuk. I shoreline here is from the Great Lakes, so is that ok driftwood to use , coming from freshwater

sirdarksol

I moved your post to its own thread, so it doesn't hijack the other thread, and so it gets answers directed solely toward your situation.

Driftwood from the Great Lakes suffers from two potential problems:
Infestation, which is easy to deal with. Baking, boiling, or soaking in bleach water will kill off anything trying to live on/in the wood.
and
Pollution, which isn't as easy to deal with. The Great Lakes aren't as bad as they used to be, and it largely depends on the area of the lake you're hunting in. If you're hunting near major industrial sites, it's probably a good idea to keep driftwood out of your aquaria. On the other hand, if it's a nearly wild area that you're hunting in, there's less of a chance of the wood carrying toxins.
However, it's always a gamble. Lots of people here have added driftwood they've found in the wild and have had no problems. There have only been a few issues caused by doing this.

Lucy

It should be ok. SDS brought up some good points.
Here's some info so you can do a bit of research about sterilizing and prepping it:
Driftwood Notes
Driftwood Do's & Don'ts
Driftwood Basics

hssea

Thanks. The driftwood from LFS or like Fosters and Smith do you need to boil those too. Not sure I want to risk the points you listed, there is alot of industries along the shore line where i live and beaches have been closed for several months for bacteria. this has been going on for years and they still aren't sure of the exact cause. I didn't even think about pollution in the water. Thanks

agabr123

IMO any kind of real driftwood that you buy should be boiled. the possible exception being if you get it from a reputable vendor on aquabid or something like that, but even then i wouldn't take a chance not boiling it