# Gathering materials from the wild



## PhylloBro (Sep 21, 2018)

All of the places that sell wood/bark and leaf litter near me are ridiculously priced and there is tons of materials around me for free where i live. Is there proven method for taking plant/rock/wood materials from the wilderness and making them safe for Dart Frogs?


----------



## jam5971 (Apr 27, 2017)

Don’t know if it’s proven, but you could use a steam cleaner on it.
I have heard of people baking items in an oven.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


----------



## gonzalez (Mar 28, 2018)

All the wood near me molds horribly but maybe you'll have better luck. However I have used leaf litter from my area with great success. Make sure it's a pesticide free place as always.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G920A using Tapatalk


----------



## S2G (Jul 5, 2016)

As long as it's pesticide free. I collect driftwood, rocks, & leaf litter locally. Driftwood is the huge money saver


----------



## Neopixal (Oct 1, 2015)

You can bake stones and leaf litter, but there’s always a risk to using wild things.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## kimcmich (Jan 17, 2016)

Greetings,

As others have noted, there is risk in using "bio-active" materials because you never know what lives in the unseen zoo inside your items. For dart keepers, the biggest concern would be introducing amphibian parasites/pathogens like chytrid or nematodes. This would especially be the case for moist items like damp leaf litter or leafmold and particularly so in areas where you have native ampihibians.

Letting collected wood fully dry (this can take months) and cooking collected substrate certainly helps (I microwave leaves/leafmold for 4 min). But neither of these methods is complete decontamination. The risk from these materials is probably low for most people - but there is _some_ risk.


----------



## gonzalez (Mar 28, 2018)

kimcmich said:


> Greetings,
> 
> As others have noted, there is risk in using "bio-active" materials because you never know what lives in the unseen zoo inside your items. For dart keepers, the biggest concern would be introducing amphibian parasites/pathogens like chytrid or nematodes. This would especially be the case for moist items like damp leaf litter or leafmold and particularly so in areas where you have native ampihibians.
> 
> Letting collected wood fully dry (this can take months) and cooking collected substrate certainly helps (I microwave leaves/leafmold for 4 min). But neither of these methods is complete decontamination. The risk from these materials is probably low for most people - but there is _some_ risk.


Wouldn't most of this be true even if you purchased the leaf litter though? 

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G920A using Tapatalk


----------



## kimcmich (Jan 17, 2016)

> Wouldn't most of this be true even if you purchased the leaf litter though?


Definitely. In the case of dried leaves the drying process has done some amount of disinfection. I microwave leaf litter no matter the source (or dryness). 

Microwaving tip: It's best to experiment with you particular material since I have had some kinds of leaves start smoking during the process.


----------



## cam1941 (Jan 16, 2014)

You shouldn't bake rocks as they can explode... Not a guarantee but def possible depending on the type.


----------



## gonzalez (Mar 28, 2018)

cam1941 said:


> You shouldn't bake rocks as they can explode... Not a guarantee but def possible depending on the type.


This is definitely true. How do you sterilize them? Would soaking them in a bleach/water solution work?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G920A using Tapatalk


----------



## Socratic Monologue (Apr 7, 2018)

I understand the contamination concern, but I also wonder: aren't all natural substrate materials equally possible disease vectors? Peat, sphagnum, orchid bark, tree fern, coco husk...do folks attempt to disinfect these materials?


----------



## cam1941 (Jan 16, 2014)

I would clean them and soak them in regular water for a while. Then just let them completely dry out in the garage for a few months. Has worked for me YMMV...


Always remember that there is some risk with anything you put in your tank including store bought materials.





gonzalez said:


> This is definitely true. How do you sterilize them? Would soaking them in a bleach/water solution work?
> 
> Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G920A using Tapatalk


----------



## PhylloBro (Sep 21, 2018)

I never considered the fact that store/online bought substrate probably came from the wild too. LOL Im definitely going to try to bake/microwave some leaf litter but i dont want to wait for a piece of driftwood to dry for months. Can i bake a nice piece of driftwood in the oven for the same effect?


----------



## varanoid (Jan 21, 2011)

Socratic Monologue said:


> I understand the contamination concern, but I also wonder: aren't all natural substrate materials equally possible disease vectors? Peat, sphagnum, orchid bark, tree fern, coco husk...do folks attempt to disinfect these materials?


Theoretically yes. I nuke all substrate in the microwave several times as a precaution.


----------



## Woodswalker (Dec 26, 2014)

On zapping your substrates: I learned the hard way that one cannot microwave ABG mix in a tupperware container. I use a glass container, now, with a glass lid loosely placed across the top. 

I do the same for sphagnum moss, though that has never ignited.


----------



## tropfrog (Sep 6, 2018)

The dead spagnum moss you purshase is most likelly allready heat treated when you purshase it. Spagnum moss that are not heat treated will sprout and start to grow as soon as you put it in a humid enviroment. Much like the dusk moss mix or similar.

For leaf litter I collect a few bags in my garden in the autum. I put it out on a flat surface to dry out complettely. The bags are then stored for at least 6 months before using/ selling it. So far there has been no problem with this method. However, we have found some kind of small centipedes in the tank. Maybe theese were introduced to the tank via eggs on the leaf litter? Anyway, they dont seems to do any harm and I believe that they are doing some kind of good as cleaner crew.

But as stated, anything you put in your tank is a risk. But putting nothing is really a lot bigger risk .

BR
Magnus


----------



## Socratic Monologue (Apr 7, 2018)

Probably these facts are well known in the frog community, but one study (here: http://scholar.google.com/scholar_u...NVlyhBMHopg-l4hmI6b262tJA&nossl=1&oi=scholarr) found that drying for 3 hours kills frog chytrid fungus, as does heating for 4 hours at 100F or 5 minutes at 140F. There's also info in the article about ethanol, ammonium quats and bleach. 

Anyone know any data regarding other relevant scary beasties? I'd look it up, but I don't know what sorts of organisms are worrysome.


----------



## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

If you really want a complete kill and sterilization, an autoclave is the hot ticket. A pressure cooker can also give you a complete kill. 
People have baked wood in an oven for four hours, and watched live bugs come out when they put it in their viv. Wood is very insulating. Oven baking does more for your piece of mind than anything.

For rocks, you can sterilize with bleach, or with H2O2 (hydrogen peroxide).


----------



## S2G (Jul 5, 2016)

Woodswalker said:


> On zapping your substrates: I learned the hard way that one cannot microwave ABG mix in a tupperware container. I use a glass container, now, with a glass lid loosely placed across the top.
> 
> I do the same for sphagnum moss, though that has never ignited.


That sounds like it has an interesting story behind it.

Personally I use turface out the bag. Collected wood I put it boiling water or I let dry in high heat we have during summer. Leaves ill nuke in the microwave with a little water and plants I process with the bleach method. Terrium I disinfect with a chemical solution that I forget the name of


----------



## PhylloBro (Sep 21, 2018)

Pumilo said:


> If you really want a complete kill and sterilization, an autoclave is the hot ticket. A pressure cooker can also give you a complete kill.
> People have baked wood in an oven for four hours, and watched live bugs come out when they put it in their viv. Wood is very insulating. Oven baking does more for your piece of mind than anything.
> 
> For rocks, you can sterilize with bleach, or with H2O2 (hydrogen peroxide).


Are you serious?? For hours and watched live bugs come out that sounds too crazy. How about a week in the bleach and then a bake?


----------



## PhylloBro (Sep 21, 2018)

Also i just looked up what an autoclave is and thats just unrealistic lol im not going to spend 2000$ to sterilize a piece of wood to save the 20$ collecting it myself xD


----------



## Pubfiction (Feb 3, 2013)

The longer you bake wood the more likely you are to penetrate deep into it and kill whatever is in there. 

What this means, if you import wood materials from overseas the exporter is suppose to bake it for hours based on the thickness of wood. So if you are willing to bake it long enough you can do a similar job I personally bake at 250F for 12-18 hours.

The reason people say it wasn't fully bakes is most people only bake for 1 or 2 hours. 

You also bring up another interesting point about wood purchased from vendors, yes actually I do boil or bake all materials that go into my vivariums, the orchid bark and otherwise and I also bake leaves. You know many vendors aren't actually keeping their dry goods in an indoor environment and there are insects that can move into the materials at any point so I personally rebake everything after having a bad experience with materials purchased from a vendor. 


Treatment of materials going into a vivarium is s spectrum its not a rule, and different people are more or less willing to invest in that and as such they may have different outcomes. Some people take plants right from home depot and throw them in vivariums and the frogs are fine, some people like me go through a process of taking divisions, bleaching, and restarting them to remove pests. 
There are other people in the community that labels itself bioactive that strongly believe in just walking out into the woods and grabing materials and doing nothing to treat them in any way. 


Every method has positive and negative outcomes and risks its up to you to decide what is worth it. Personally if its your first set of frogs I say go with the time tested and largely proven methods of purchasing from vendors. It works well most of the time and requires very little work. As


For instance I rarely worry much about diseases with captive bred frogs or plants, its just IME it doesn't happen often and I know lots of huge dart froggers that will skip quarantine. That said I still do it, however I do worry a lot about getting undesirable living organisms in my tank cause that happens all the time. Slugs suck, they leave slime trails all over your glass, moss, ferns all sorts of plants that are basically weeds in the vivarium can ruin the look and make you work extra hard to keep on top of them. Some people don't care though.


----------



## PhylloBro (Sep 21, 2018)

Pubfiction said:


> The longer you bake wood the more likely you are to penetrate deep into it and kill whatever is in there.
> 
> What this means, if you import wood materials from overseas the exporter is suppose to bake it for hours based on the thickness of wood. So if you are willing to bake it long enough you can do a similar job I personally bake at 250F for 12-18 hours.
> 
> ...



How long is a good amount of time to bake leaves and wood? I dont want my leaves to catch on fire in my apartment.


----------



## Pubfiction (Feb 3, 2013)

I bake leaves for 6 hours at 200F. Your oven might not even go that low. Alternatively you can boil them as well.


----------



## cam1941 (Jan 16, 2014)

Its a good idea to wet your leaves and drift wood before baking...


I always soak cork bark before baking for instance.





PhylloBroTM said:


> How long is a good amount of time to bake leaves and wood? I dont want my leaves to catch on fire in my apartment.


----------



## DPfarr (Nov 24, 2017)

PhylloBroTM said:


> Also i just looked up what an autoclave is and thats just unrealistic lol im not going to spend 2000$ to sterilize a piece of wood to save the 20$ collecting it myself xD


Go to a thrift shop and find a pressure cooker.


----------



## varanoid (Jan 21, 2011)

DPfarr said:


> Go to a thrift shop and find a pressure cooker.


This. Pressure cookers aren't that expensive


----------



## Klinger4077 (Oct 2, 2018)

How long would one have to pressure cook material to make sure it’s sterile? My pressure cookers just have a cooking period but do you go through multiple cooking periods? 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## DPfarr (Nov 24, 2017)

It’s good you’re not guessing on it. Google “pressure cooker sterilization” and do some comparisons to yours. 

If you did 15PSI /~120°c for 15 minutes it should kill everything. (Everything you’re trying to kill at least). How that works on your pressure cooker is up to your good understanding of it.


----------



## cam1941 (Jan 16, 2014)

Sterilization is a tricky thing... If you sterilize a fish tank, the fish die.


Keep in mind that if you kill all the good bacteria the bad bacteria have no competition to keep them in check... 



Avoid the extremes (ie rocks with fresh wild frog crap on them lol and completely sterile substrate) 



You want to be right there in the middle 



Good luck...


----------



## jgragg (Nov 23, 2009)

People are right, it's a continuum. Most circumstances don't require the "sterilizer Nazi" approach, at all. A few do - if I was working with an assurance colony, or had examples of truly or practically irreplaceable taxa, I would be a sterilizer Nazi. But I work with common, easily replaced species. So I take a pretty easy-going approach. Don't get me wrong, I take impeccable care of them. But I'm not a helicopter daddy, let's say. I'm more of a free-ranger.

I have yet to be seriously burned (yeah, I've had a snail or mushroom or two - but no disease outbreaks, and no ectoparasite issues). I'm pretty old. Makes me think _maybe_ I'll get out of this without ever having been seriously burned.

I usually just take big stuff (like driftwood) onto the driveway and blast it with the hose. Then I leave it in the sun for a few weeks. If I'm feeling particularly hateful towards whatever might be lurking, I'll stick the object in the back seat of my car for a few weeks. All day with the windows up, it gets pretty hot in there! Do it 15-20 days in a row, I call it pretty good. I collect my own live oak litter too, by the trash bag. That stuff, I just let it sit in the garage over winter to dry out. Cold, dry, and dark is pretty harsh for most of what worries me.

I like to start thinking with "why?" For every answer, ask it again. After a few rounds you get somewhere. Then, you can start to ask "how?" I have found that just breezily starting with "how?" is a good way to wind up at "ah, crap - this isn't what I wanted after all". A waste of time and money. Invest your time, up front - better returns.

Just something to chew on.

Good luck!


----------



## Okapi (Oct 12, 2007)

While I do sometimes buy live oak leaves I do use leaves from my own yard where I know for a fact that no pesticides or other chemicals have been used for at least the eight years that I have owned my house. I have a koi pond where multiple species of frogs and sometimes toads breed and overwinter so I boil my leaves. I have found that maple and tulip poplar leaves break down fast, which feeds springtails and isopods, while oak leaves take longer. I was actually surprised at how fast chestnut and dogwood leaves break down in an aquarium but have not tested them in a vivarium yet.


----------



## Ravage (Feb 5, 2016)

I autoclave a LOT of substrate. Sometimes in the lab autoclave, sometimes in the good old 941- which is basically a big pressure cooker with an inner sleeve. The times to really sterilize wood (I use wood chips as media for mushrooms) vary with density.
It was mentioned that 15 minutes at 120C (~250F) would suffice. It probably will not for solid pieces of wood. 250F is reached at 15 psi at _sea level_. Home pressure cookers are set at 15 psi by that little weight on the exhaust. I can run slightly higher psi because of my equipment, but the bugger is actual temp; and that varies with elevation. I live at 8500' elev. which means that at 17 psi, I'm still only in the 250F neighborhood (sorry too lazy right now to calculate it, I go by practice these days). 
I run a cluster of jars 50% filled with wood chips *At Pressure* for 90 minutes. I run 4 Kilogram bags- jammed packed inside *At Pressure* for up to 3 hours. This is for complete sterilization. We have witness strips that we can put in the center of a load to verify we have reached total biological genocide.
But for the purposes of cleaning wood, Pasteurization should be sufficient. There's still the issue of density and reaching really deeply into wood. 
So I would suggest- for wood at least 45 min- 1 hour.
For substrate- at least 30 min.
For leaves- 15 mins should work. As mentioned earlier- wet those leaves before cooking. If you over-autoclave leaves it will camelize the sugars inside the leaves. They turn DARK brown and will not last as long in the vivarium. I have certainly done that to leaves, until I realized I was just over doing the whole thing.
But a pressure cooker is a great idea if you have one and your stuff will fit inside it.


----------



## Okapi (Oct 12, 2007)

Ravage said:


> If you over-autoclave leaves it will camelize the sugars inside the leaves. They turn DARK brown and will not last as long in the vivarium.


That might explain why a high tannin chestnut leaf turns into a skeleton in a few days but is shrimp and pleco central during that time. When I boil leaves I get them to a rolling boil and then drop it back to a simmer and a lot of the leaves do turn very dark.


----------



## jgragg (Nov 23, 2009)

> (I use wood chips as media for mushrooms)


Now there's an example of a circumstance requiring the sterilizer-Nazi approach. Fungus culture is exacting on the front end, as far as I've seen.

I'm having an interesting experience right now - an insect hatch, of something resembling miniature crane flies. They're about the size of the largest mosquito - maybe a thumbnail's width in full "wings & legs" diameter. I'm getting one appearing every day or so, it's been ongoing about the last 2 weeks. I kind of like them. They're actually the only animals in the tank at present, so I like the movement. The volant adults seem to only live a few days or so - I never have more than 2-3 at once.

The only thing I personally field-collected was the juniper sticks I've got running across the open air. Otherwise, there are nursery-sourced plants, DIY/jobber-sourced plants, some pet shop Selaginella, and LFS that arrived in dried & compressed form. Oh, and cork. And some Dusk moss mix that's grown into an assortment of mosses, liverworts, and ferns.

That's it, for organic matter in the tank. I'm not having these "flies" in any other tank. I'm guessing they came in as eggs in some of the nursery stock. I anticipate that their life cycle will be broken, and when the last egg hatches, that'll be it.

So there's an example of the kind of consequence I experience from a laissez-faire approach to biosecurity, as far as organic decor objects go. I can imagine much worse, but have never experienced it.


----------



## PhylloBro (Sep 21, 2018)

I am definitely willing to go get a pressure cooker, but can the same result be achieved in the oven with equal effectiveness? I only ask because I think i can fit larger pieces in the oven.


----------



## Klinger4077 (Oct 2, 2018)

PhylloBroTM said:


> I am definitely willing to go get a pressure cooker, but can the same result be achieved in the oven with equal effectiveness? I only ask because I think i can fit larger pieces in the oven.




Using a pressure cooker would do more sterilizing than an oven, at least I’m pretty sure it would. Pressure cookers also come in different sizes. I had a pressure cooker that had about a 10-12” diameter but we downsized because we didn’t need one so big. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## kimcmich (Jan 17, 2016)

A pressure-cooker will work _faster_ than a conventional oven at bringing material to temperature - but you can still bring objects to the same temperature with more time in a conventional oven.


----------



## JimM (Oct 2, 2018)

I have a pressure cooker, but I'm not about to use it to sterilize leaves etc.
That will likely result in leaves breaking down faster in the Viv...(which you might not mind) Definitely a nuclear option, but not necessary IMHO.

Oven is fine...even drying out for a few months is fine, then a stint in the oven if you're worried. I have a collection of wood etc that's been drying in a barn loft for some time, and I wouldn't hesitate to use any of it as is.

Up here there's a nice variety of leaves, with only a few thick, robust types that will last similar to oak leaves...Madrone being one. I'm going to use a mixture. Look on the ground right now and see which leaves are still around from last season...those are the toughest. I'd use a mixture of long lasting, and shorter lived, as the plants can use the nitrogen from the shorter lived leaves, while the longer lasting ones will hold up longer for aesthetics. Thin leaves like maple don't last. Madrone leaves are great...I'll probably bag a bunch this season.

I'm new to dart frogs, but not new to keeping herps and collecting things from the wild. I've always been mildly cautious without going overboard, or succumbing to dogma's that have no empirical data behind them, yet get repeated over and over. (like don't use western red cedar).

You certainly can use western red cedar...I have for 20 years, I have it submerged in a fishtank as well. With snails and shrimp along with the fish. Leaks tanins but doesn't hurt anything.
Just make sure it's an old, weathered piece. I use pieces from old root balls.
If I expose some fresh wood by cutting it, I'll cover that spot with epoxy, although I don't think it's necessary.

The likelihood of introducing a pest shouldn't be ignored, just use a little sense. I introduced hook-worms into a Central American cichlid fish tank years ago being careless, putting bass in there from a local pond with no quarantine. That was no fun, but I was also being really stupid/careless.


----------



## ardengardell (Oct 31, 2018)

Happen to be up in the Pacific NW (Portland)right now and there are TONS of awesome moss and plant species that would look great in a viv IMHO - does anyone have specific insight on collecting stuff from this area? Obviously watching for pesticide free areas


----------



## cam1941 (Jan 16, 2014)

Your better off not collecting temperate moss. Some species will survive if you give it the right conditions but the problem is that you will not be able to replicate its exact conditions. 



Because of this it will not continue to look the way it did when you decided to take it home. It will change and the end result is not as attractive as its wild form. 



Not to mention the risks you take of introducing all kinds of pests into your viv. You can't bleach moss as it will most likely die...









ardengardell said:


> Happen to be up in the Pacific NW (Portland)right now and there are TONS of awesome moss and plant species that would look great in a viv IMHO - does anyone have specific insight on collecting stuff from this area? Obviously watching for pesticide free areas


----------



## ardengardell (Oct 31, 2018)

Thanks - intuition had me thinking as much but figured I'd ask!


----------



## jgragg (Nov 23, 2009)

If you were keeping cool-temperate amphibs, or such fish in a paludarium, or just wanted to keep local plants they can do great. The problem lies in keeping plants that naturally get a dormant period, as tropicals. It works inside just the same as in the yard - e.g. if you want to grow peaches or apples in FL you need to buy ones specifically bred to have low cooling-hours needs. Similarly, I lived in coastal NE FL for a while and tried to grow some temperate bamboo outside there - it didn't die but _it sure wasn't happy_. Just sat there, basically - no growth or spread whatsoever. But I also did some tropical bamboos and they did famously.

I've kept PacNW mosses alive for years in captivity. I just gave them a local-style winter - cool and moist with short days.

For a tropical viv, use tropical plants. 

good luck!


----------



## CMH80 (Mar 31, 2018)

just want to say I unfortunately had to toss and redo a tank recently due to flatworms. I had use 'wild' leaf litter. I had dried it then soaked in scalding water. I can't be be 100% they were from that and not the plants, but I am suspicious.


----------

