Where to get wood for my freshwater aquarium

The age old question. Do I have to buy rocks and wood from the aquarium store? No, you most certainly do not!

Trust me, as an avid hiker who has collected many a rocks and wood for many aquariums over the years, you can do it too. That being said, there are some things you want to look out for. In this blog, I’ll cover the essentials for collecting aquarium wood in nature.

Cool looking wood! But I didn’t follow my own advice and this ended up being a smelly aquarium that I had to restart.

What to look for in wood

You want to find wood that has died years ago and has been baking in the sun. If it’s dried out wood, it shouldn't have any moss or fungus growing on it. A little bit of lichen is OK. 

Give your branch a good sniff. It shouldn’t smell strongly of resins or saps because that can foul up the water. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, think about pine sap… You’ve certainly smelled this one at some point in your life; it’s that Pine Sol smell! 

Most trees or woody plants produce saps or resins as a defense mechanism against boring insects. So grabbing branches off of a living tree will have way more resins than one that's been dead for a few years. 

Another important thing to look for is structural integrity. If you pick it up and it starts to crumble, it certainly won’t last long in your aquarium.

The last thing you’ll want to look out for in wood is presence of insects. If there’s evidence that this chunk of wood is home to a multitude of bugs, look for another one. Bugs tend to compromise structural integrity of the wood, plus indicate that there’s still a lot of good organic matter left in the wood. It’s best to go for wood that’s not so attractive to insects, because it’s less likely to have substances that break down in your aquarium.

If you pick up a chunk of wood and see this on the other side, find a new one!

Where to look for wood

Look along forest edges or in alpine areas. You don’t want to be collecting wood from dark, damp areas like the bottom of a rainforest. That wood is likely to have all sorts of critters living in it as well as fungus and other microscopic organisms. 

One of my favorite spots to look for wood is in places that have seen wildfires or avalanches. I live in Colorado, and fires are a huge part of our ecosystems, so it’s not hard to find places where trees burned and sat in the sun for a decade.

Avalanche alley - surely there’s at least a couple good branches for your aquarium in that pile.

Treating wood

The best way to treat wood prior to entering your aquarium is to boil it for a couple hours or so. A light boil will do fine. It just needs to be enough to disinfect the chunk of wood.

If you have a really large chunk of wood, it might be hard to find a pot big enough, unless you have a cauldron. But most people don't, myself included.

A good alternative is to soak the wood in a large tote. It’s not going to disinfect the wood, but after it's soaked for a few days give it a solid scrub down. Soaking will help to remove all the loose, unstable debris that would rot away underwater long term.

Soaking wood also gives you an opportunity to observe how this wood will respond underwater. Sometimes even a chunk that smells neutral when dry will start to leech resins or other compounds once submerged. 

Can I use evergreen or softwoods in my freshwater aquarium?

I hear a lot of confusion over whether or not you can use evergreen wood in aquariums. You can!

That’s virtually all I use. The most common species I use are ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa), lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) and a couple species of spruce and fir each. But depending on where you live, those species will be different.

A couple chunks of ponderosa pine that I pieced together to resemble a fallen pine tree.

New wood is tinting my aquarium water

New aquarium wood will tint water a yellowish brown color. If this happens to you don’t worry about it; it’s perfectly normal and safe for your fish. These are just tannins being released from wood. If you’ve ever heard of tanning hides into leather… They use tannins from wood to do that!

Is that white film on the wood safe?

That film is a water mold. It’s not harmful for fish and some might even pick at it a bit. It shows up on virtually every piece of new wood you throw in the aquarium, so there’s nothing to worry about.

You can scrub it off with a toothbrush and siphon the chunks out if you’d like. It will also go away on its own in two or three weeks.

Most importantly

Most importantly, have fun and get some inspiration from nature. For me, having a planted tank is about bringing a slice of nature into my home, so why not look to nature for design elements?

My late dog Ed would always help me look for sticks. I miss his help, but cherish all the times we spent outside together.

Ed is looking for sticks.

He found the perfect one!