indrpd

hi. I have put a dead piece of wood in my half water half dry land tank. I have cooked the wood in boiling water for a very long time before but now there is whitish spots of moisture mushroom on the wood part that comes out of the water. The wood is half in water and the other half above the water and only the part above got all the mushroom growing.
Its like this for a week already.

Do you know if the mushroom thing will disappear by itself?
Is it dangerous for animals in the tank? I have a mudskipper goby. It seems fine now but I worry that the mushroom thing is poisoneous for the goby.

Wolfgang8810

when in doubt take it out. you can find safer wood in petstores. i wouldnt trust anything from "nature" in any of my tanks.

Chief_waterchanger

I would suggest removing it as best you can and let it go. They are exposed to that kind of stuff in nature.

We use driftwood from the local lakes and haven't had any trouble with our fish. And lets face it, too many fishkeepers want to keep their fish in an isolation bubble. "Can't let them get near any parasites, diseases, bacteria, etc" but they are exposed to that in the wild and if they are in good health 9 times out of 10 they will not contract whatever they are exposed to.

timg

Here, Here! Fish are very able to resist most natural diseases under normal circumstances. the problems come when they have been bred for too long away from the natural environment hwre their immune system doesn't have chance to develop.

If allowed to come into contact with disease, most fish will build an immunity to it in the same way as humans do. The biggest problem these days is that we, as keepers, insist on almost sterile conditions, so the natural immunity is suppressed.

The mushrooms in question are a natural occurance on old wood, and it's a fungus that occurs in the woods where the branches have broken off, fallen to the ground and started to rot away. As to whether it's harmful, I wouldn't want to say. Most fungus is harmless, but some isn't, so it would be best to err on the side of caution.

indrpd

What does the petshop wood have that the would from nature doesnt?
Is there a difference between drift wood and normal tree wood?

In my situation I think the problem is with the wood part exposed to the air that gets fungus. Under water it seems to do very fine beside the water discoloring.

timg

Petshop wood has normally been treated before you buy it, either through long periods of soaking and/or by steaming/boiling to kill any bacteria. A lot of the time it has been kiln dried too, (mainly to reduce the weight for shipping) which rather defeats the object, if you're putting it into a tank! These are the main differences.

The discoloration is caused by the tannins in the wood leeching into the water. It is harmless and in some cases actually enhances the look of the tank! To avoid this you would need to boil the wood for hours, repeatedly changing the water and boiling for around 30 minutes again and again.
This is why most will buy driftwood from stores, rather than picking it up in the local forest. Even so, there are no guarantees that the wood from the store won't need boiling as well, since a lot of it won't be tannin free!

The fungal growth on the wood is where it is out in the air. If the wood were completely submerged you would not have the problem.

You have a couple of choices here: Leave it alone and see what happens, (scrape the fungus off if you're worried), remove it, re-boil it until the water runs clear, by which time all the spores will be well gone, and put it back, completely submerged this time, or throw it away and find something else for your tank!

Chief_waterchanger

If you decide to explore leaving it in there, let us know how it works out, please.

sirdarksol

While I agree to an extent with the Chief and timg, I also would like to point out that aquarium fish have not developed a tolerance to all natural sources of stress and disease.

In this case, though, if it were my tank, I would probably take the chance and leave the mushrooms. They might be edible to and good for your fish, and if they aren't it could very well recognize them as dangerous. Besides that, the mushrooms would give the tank more of a natural look.

COBettaCouple

I don't know if the mushroom is dangerous or if there are spores in the wood, etc.. so many unknowns would have me taking it out and looking at places like petsmart or www.drsfosterandsmith.com for wood that i'd feel safer about. It could be safe, but it's just a question of is it worth the risk or not and how much risk to you think it is.

indrpd

I really hang on to this piece of wood. it's very nice . it has many natural looking holes for fish to hide or explore. The wood surface still has the tree trunk rough scaling.

I couldnt submerge it completely because its too big for the shallow water tank I have. My goby must have dry high surface out of water to guard its territory. One day i will take a picture to show to people from tis forum.