Diy Legitimate Driftwood

hello, over the past few months, I have been experimenting with making my own driftwood. I needed to find hardwood species, take branches, and cure them. I did reaserch on what type of wood spiderwood is, it happens to be azalea bushes. I took a few azalea branches, threw them in the oven at 215 degrees for 3 hours. When I took them out, I rinsed them thoroughly. I kept the bark on, and I'm glad I did, here's why. Not all people have access to a sand blaster which is the most efficient way to remove bark. So I burried the larger peices that I couldn't boil into the substrate. They were in a shrimp and pleco tank. As we all know, pleco looovveeee driftwood. It's effort for them to chew the actual wood. But the bark is easy money. Within a month, almost all the bark was gone. Even if you don't have pleco, just make a little nick in the bark at random spots, and in a short amount of time it will peel off. I even made a driftwood pleco cave that had my bristlenose spawn for the first time. The male can much on the wood while protecting eggs. Here is a list of safe woods that I used successfully.

Azalea
Maple
Oak
Magnolia
Crepe myrtle
Manzanita

pictures of the driftwood I made are up top

 

Nice looking tank. Discus like the branches. They like to swim through them. If you could spread them out a bit they’ll swim through them. Naturally they swim in the roots of trees.
Again nice set up. Couple of thing I’d like to talk about. Pm me if your interested.

 

Good to hear! I have several azalea bushes and 3 crepe myrtles I can look through for some good branches! That would be far preferable to spending the $20-$70 on driftwood pieces I like~

 

Yup love this thread

 

Good to hear! I have several azalea bushes and 3 crepe myrtles I can look through for some good branches! That would be far preferable to spending the $20-$70 on driftwood pieces I like~

Nice. I love how you can get free driftwood while pruning your bushes and trees! For sure! And even if your after manzanita, just buy manzanita branches on eBay for really cheap, not listed as driftwood, but ad for weddings, and go through the same process.

Yup love this thread

Thanks, I'm glad!