# Best places for Driftwood



## Davidadelp05 (Jun 23, 2018)

Where is everyone getting their driftwood from? It seems like a lot of places are charging a lot for wood. Not looking for cork I just hate to pay 30$+ for a single piece of wood


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## oldlady25715 (Nov 17, 2007)

Gohstwood, manazanita -both preferably sand blasted, spider wood, mopani, and cork bark are good woods from a local pet store. Shy away from grapewood.


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## Austindg13 (Aug 31, 2017)

oldlady25715 said:


> Gohstwood, manazanita -both preferably sand blasted, spider wood, mopani, and cork bark are good woods from a local pet store. Shy away from grapewood.




Why don’t you like grape wood?


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## Davidadelp05 (Jun 23, 2018)

That’s my problem I don’t have any local stores that carry any at all, all I have at pet supplies plus and petsmart and neither have any. I’ve seen some on joshsfrogs but they want 30$+ for a single piece of wood and it has nothing to do with the fact I don’t have the money or am to cheap but that much money for a single piece is ridiculous


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## JPP (Mar 25, 2015)

Austindg13 said:


> Why don’t you like grape wood?
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


Not speaking for her, but grapewood isn't really suitable for wet habitats. It breaks down too fast and rots quickly.


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## Austindg13 (Aug 31, 2017)

JPP said:


> Not speaking for her, but grapewood isn't really suitable for wet habitats. It breaks down too fast and rots quickly.




Got it. I have drift wood in my viv so that’s why I was wondering. Thanks. 


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## jgragg (Nov 23, 2009)

It's incredible - _I just cannot believe_ - that nobody but me collects their own driftwood. It's also incredible that everybody who currently does not collect their own driftwood, has already fully evaluated and then rejected the idea. I've been collecting my own wood for years - I buy no viv wood other than cork - and while I've learned a few things (about e.g., tannins) I have had no bad experiences. I've got totes half-full of driftwood I collected as much as 20 years ago. I've got pieces of wood that I collected, that have been in more or less continuous service for that long too. It helps to be able to identify the species of wood, to predict its characteristics and behavior, but it can also be enough to just know the few local species you might want to avoid (black walnut, for example). Honestly, a lot of the wood I collect, is found when I'm out herping, or scouting places to herp later in a better season. It doesn't require a special trip, unless you want to return to cut off a nice section of a piece that's too big for a viv, or is buried in a logjam, or whatever.

In short, I'm just arguing it's a good option that I think more people should consider. Even if you have to drive a couple hours to get to a clean creek with legal access, at $30 a stick retail the drive is gonna pencil out.

Peace.


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## Tantu (Sep 4, 2016)

I agree with the pet store idea, I found a nice piece of wood at one for around $14 that now sits as the center piece of my viv. I believe I got lucky though since I haven't found any good pieces since, but it's definitely worth a look. I wish I could look for my own driftwood, but I live in a desert. 


Happy wood hunting!


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## Davidadelp05 (Jun 23, 2018)

I’m. It against the idea of collecting my own by any means but is there any type of wood to look for that may be better then others? What is the best way to prep it to be viv safe? I see people saying to boil it but how do you recommend boiling a big piece of wood The only pot I have that may be big enough is a chili pot lol and i don’t know if that would suffice.


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## S2G (Jul 5, 2016)

Davidadelp05 said:


> I’m. It against the idea of collecting my own by any means but is there any type of wood to look for that may be better then others? What is the best way to prep it to be viv safe? I see people saying to boil it but how do you recommend boiling a big piece of wood The only pot I have that may be big enough is a chili pot lol and i don’t know if that would suffice.


I have a bucket that I use. I fill it with boiling water and scrub the driftwood. Then I bake it in the sun.

I mainly look on eBay for driftwood occasionally I'll find good deals. If you really want malaysian, mopani, ghost wood, or quality cork pieces you have to pay to play unless you have a local spot.

I have several rivers and tons of creeks around me. I collect all my driftwood from them. I try to stay away from locations where you know there's runoff. You can find bends where debris collects or wait until winter when the water is really low. Hardwoods work the best of course


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## Davidadelp05 (Jun 23, 2018)

I never thought about trying eBay, I may go look around some of our local creeks and see what I can find


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## jgragg (Nov 23, 2009)

> I’m...against the idea of collecting my own by any means


That's fine, to each their own. The thing is, nobody out there is growing "viv wood" - it's all collected or repurposed. Grape wood comes from re-initiating vineyards - yield drops at around 75-100 years as I understand it, at which point it can be better to rip out and replant - but for the most part viv wood is wild-harvested. Cork is an actual crop, but mostly it's just sort of a plunder. Presumably some is sustainable, surely some is not, but...don't kid yourself that we aren't having an impact. I think collecting your own is a way to actually reduce our environmental footprint.



> What is the best way to prep it to be viv safe?


Ask yourself, what threats to the viv could this driftwood pose? It depends on the nature of the water and watershed you're collecting from, and also the immediate most-recent environment the piece was sitting in. 
- So for example when I have collected ocean driftwood I don't worry about snails that might eat my plants, because the wood is going into a very different environment. Any sea snails on there will die! Ha ha. But the salt could play hell with the plants and animals - so I have to get the salt out. Repeated soaking and rinsing works for that. If it rains a lot where you are, you could just leave it outside, maybe up on blocks, hung on string, or something like that to reduce the odds of contamination or colonization.
- In an agricultural landscape I would probably try to go uphill/upstream as far as possible, and minimize the watershed area influencing the wood. To reduce herbicides & pesticides. Then I would try to expose the wood to as much UV and heat as possible, to allow the contaminants to break down. 
- If I was collecting from a basically clean, freshwater watershed (like off a National Forest, that goes all the way to the top of the local "mountain") I would probably just worry about snails and earwigs and stuff. Heat-treat the wood in a parked car for a few weeks. Maybe bleach-spray it and rinse well first.

The boil (or bleach)/scrub/sun approach is sound, if you have the container. You could dig a wood-shaped and -sized hole, line it with a tarp or plastic dropcloth, and have a "bigger bucket" that way.

Good luck!


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## Austindg13 (Aug 31, 2017)

Sorry to steal this thread but I’m curious about that whole grape wood doesn’t last long in a vivarium. Just wondering other people’s experience with it. It’s my center piece of a tank that I’m about to redo. I’m wondering if I should just try and find a new piece of wood now.










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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

@austindg13 - If it is, indeed, grape wood, it will probably break down much quicker than the other kinds of wood mentioned in this thread. I have never had grape wood survive much longer than a year in a humid viv. Your piece is a lot thicker than any I have tried, though, so maybe you will get longer life out of it? Don't feel too bad, though. I bought some cypress knees thinking that if they exist in a swamp, they must be good for vivs, right? Not so much, as it turns out. No idea why, but they are already getting soft and I have only had them in there for a little over a year. I bought another guy's viv a couple of years back, too, and the pieces in there are completely rotten already. I mean, when I lived in Florida, I saw a boat at the bottom of Silver Springs that was supposedly made by Spanish explorers out of some kind of cypress (maybe not the knee variety?), so how can it not last in my vivarium!??! Stick with the standards is what I learned.

@jgragg - I appreciate you bringing up this possibility of collecting your own driftwood. I hadn't really considered it as an option before. I think I fall victim to the fallacy that if it comes from a fish store, it's automatically clean and safe for any purpose! I know that many of the pieces in the fish store come from environments even more polluted than those in my own backyard. Having said all that, though, the main reason I don't go out and collect on my own is my assumption that nothing in my area (CO) is appropriate for the job. We don't have any native hardwoods to speak of and the riparian species are all weedy and short-timers compared to hardwoods. If I found a pieces of driftwood I was happy with, I have no guarantee that it would last much longer than grape wood. This is just an assumption, though. Am I wrong in assuming that conifer wood or riparian species like willows and cotton woods are going to be relatively short-timers? They certainly don't have the density that I usually look for in good vivarium wood. Thanks again for opening the discussion.

Mark


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## jgragg (Nov 23, 2009)

> I mean, when I lived in Florida, I saw a boat at the bottom of Silver Springs that was supposedly made by Spanish explorers out of some kind of cypress (maybe not the knee variety?), so how can it not last in my vivarium!??!


The trick there is permanent submergence - not a wet-dry-wet-dry cycle. Logs underwater for centuries can still be milled and utilized, where legal (they also serve as important habitat structure, and sometimes have archaeological protections too). 
Anyway the permanent submergence thing has implications for vivs - if you keep wood underwater it will last better, no matter the species AFAIK.



> many of the pieces in the fish store come from environments even more polluted than those in my own backyard


Exactly - that was something I didn't make explicit, but it is a fact. Unfortunately, much of the world is more contaminated than our little part of it.



> assumption that nothing in my area (CO) is appropriate for the job


Actually, (I assume you're on the Front Range) if you go over to the West Slope where there's a lot of juniper, well, I find that juniper serves viv duty very well. Besides roots exposed in gullies, and driftwood along dry washes, creeks, and rivers, you can also prospect (and score!) in old chainings. There's lots of junipers that got tipped over decades ago, where the roots are exposed and often pretty interesting. They are clean, dry, and seasoned. For climbing branches and perches I will also just use sections of juniper branches or thin trunks. Branches you can get in any live stand of juniper - the lower limbs die but hang on for decades. You can just kick them off, striking upward is best. Close your eyes and have a go at one.

A nice factor with chained wood and driftwood is, the original terpenes etc have long-since vaporized off. I also like the old wood because the bark has already been abraded off in floods, or it's hanging in tatters and is super easy to just pull off. I believe that having the bark off helps prevent or slow wood from rotting.

A folding pruning saw is a nice tool. Goes in a daypack without tearing up your stuff, and makes quick work lopping off dry wood pieces.

@ Austindg13 - nice viv! If that center piece isn't coming apart, I would keep it. Plenty of character there.


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