# wood sterilization



## darkspot716 (Sep 4, 2008)

ok so i got a tank off a kid on cl and it has some pretty nice pieces of mopani wood.i know the kid used to have both geckos and frogs at different points. how should i sterilize the wood? bake it or boil it? or boil it then bake it?


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Neither is going to be really effective unless your willing to bake it for a really long-time possibly more than 24 hours and that still may not be sufficient to deal with some pathogens. Autoclaving/pressure cooker is about the only sure way to accomplish it. 

Some comments 

Ed


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## Dane (Aug 19, 2004)

Ed said:


> Neither is going to be really effective unless your willing to bake it for a really long-time possibly more than 24 hours and that still may not be sufficient to deal with some pathogens. Autoclaving/pressure cooker is about the only sure way to accomplish it.
> 
> Some comments
> 
> Ed


Is this to say that baking & boiling for shorter periods won't accomplish anything in terms of sanitation?


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Dane said:


> Is this to say that baking & boiling for shorter periods won't accomplish anything in terms of sanitation?


See the attempt here that didn't do anything to the ants in a relatively thin piece of wood.. http://www.dendroboard.com/forum/pa...d-interesting-quote-confusion.html#post673702 

Some comments 

Ed


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## npaull (May 8, 2005)

In my opinion we sometimes overhype the need for sterility. These aren't surgical instruments, they are vivarium decorations. A piece of wood that may at some point in the past have come in contact with some geckos or frogs is really not very likely to harbor the next herpetological black plague. And these aren't vivaria containing the very last individuals of a precious species, either. A little reasoned laxity is not a crime.

I bake most additions to my vivaria hardscape for awhile, recognizing that this will kill stuff on the surface but insulated things inside may survive. But you know what, so what? I'm not going to buy an autoclave.

CO2 gassing is another thing I will sometimes do depending on the object and how well it will tolerate baking.

The fact of the matter is that these are living things, and this is a living hobby. We're never going to achieve sterility. Be smart, be reasonable, but not everything that goes in a vivarium needs to be sterilized first.


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## Dane (Aug 19, 2004)

Ed said:


> See the attempt here that didn't do anything to the ants in a relatively thin piece of wood.. http://www.dendroboard.com/forum/pa...d-interesting-quote-confusion.html#post673702
> 
> Some comments
> 
> Ed


That didn't exactly answer my question, but thanks.


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## Pubfiction (Feb 3, 2013)

I have had good luck baking wood and other things. Maybe not always effective but it worked well enough to keep any things I didn't want out of my tank when other methods failed. Set it to 300F for the evening. I never only did 1 hour so I cannot comment usually I do 4 hours or so. 

Sterilization is sometimes a controversial topic, there are those that believe sterilization is absolute as in EVERYTHING is dead period, no exceptions. But in the real world many supposed "sterilization" techniques are partial. So lets call it cleaning the wood. I view it more as a gradient and a game of odds. Where there are best practices such as autoclaving for many hours across a gradient of approaches down to just rinsing it off. And I think that baking or boiling for several hours is the most reasonable and generally effective balance for most people in a home because the oven is the largest heating device most people have. 

Other things that you could do to help would be just leaving it out and dry for several months. Soaking it in a high salt water bath for a day or 2 then soaking it in regular water to remove the salt. 

If you do any of these things I think its better / safer than doing nothing at all. Your only other option is to buy a piece of wood that has been baked / treated with a PPQ permit which I believe states it was heated in a kiln for 24 or 48 hours.


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## JPccusa (Mar 10, 2009)

You can put the wood in a black trash bag and leave it out in the sun for a few days (weeks?). It won't sterilize it, but it probably will get rid of any unwanted hitch-hiker.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Dane said:


> That didn't exactly answer my question, but thanks.


Actually I thought it did answer your question specifically this point... 


> . After that it sat drying in the sun for a week, then i baked all my wood in the oven at 350 for a hour and left it in overnight.


This meant that the wood was held at 350 F for more than an hour and further more, cooled down slowly allowing the heat to penetrate the wood.... So with respect to your comment, shorter periods of time are not effective. 

Some comments 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

npaull said:


> The fact of the matter is that these are living things, and this is a living hobby. We're never going to achieve sterility. Be smart, be reasonable, but not everything that goes in a vivarium needs to be sterilized first.


Too often when something unwanted shows up in a tank, the first thing the person says is but I sterilized everything... ignoring the fact that what they were doing wasn't going to really accomplish anything.. 

Most of the time, a simple scrub in hot water with a stiff brush is going to accomplish the same amount of things as baking it for a relatively brief period of time. In addition, one of the issues people always forget is that heating a number of these materials in water is not only going to damage the structure allowing for an increased rate of decay, but removes beneficial chemicals (example, humic acids from leaf litter). 

People should also keep in mind that if the wood is soaked with water before hand (say by boiling), then the hottest it can get in an oven is the boiling point of water until enough water has boiled off until the material is no longer cooled via evaporative cooling.... This also prevents protected areas like crevices and cracks or the interior of the wood from heating through and protects organisms in those areas. 

Some comments 

Ed


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## Dane (Aug 19, 2004)

Ed said:


> Actually I thought it did answer your question specifically this point...
> 
> 
> This meant that the wood was held at 350 F for more than an hour and further more, cooled down slowly allowing the heat to penetrate the wood.... So with respect to your comment, shorter periods of time are not effective.
> ...


Sorry Ed, I wasn't clear initially. My question was in relation to your suggestion of 24 hours or more in an oven for any benefit in regards to reducing undesirables.
I would also consider one hour heating time to be an insufficient period for this purpose.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Dane said:


> Sorry Ed, I wasn't clear initially. My question was in relation to your suggestion of 24 hours or more in an oven for any benefit in regards to reducing undesirables.
> I would also consider one hour heating time to be an insufficient period for this purpose.


The issue comes with whether or not you heat the materials all the way through to a sufficient temperature. Obviously thin pieces are going to take less time than larger pieces. The trick comes from attempting to determine whether or not the wood has actually been heated through and that is part of the issue for having to bake it for long periods of time. Obviously we can't do like a roast and stick a temperature gauge into the wood and get an accurate picture of what is happening as the heat would just conduct along the wire.. 

The vast majority of the recommendations for sanitizing/disinfecting materials for enclosures the lengths of time are insufficient to even impact the anything beyond the surface of the materials because either organics are shielding organisms or the cracks and crevices are not being penetrated by the heat. The time spent attempting to sterilize the materials would have been better spent with a stiff brush and some hot water... If people did that more then you would also see a greater diversity in the form of mosses and ferns appearing in some tanks. 

Not that many years ago (well, longer now that I think about it), based on the recommendations of a curator/verterinarian I respect, I attempted to disinfect/sterilize all materials. Over time, it repeatedly demonstrated itself to not be in the best interest of the enclosures as it cut down on plant diversity and increased the rate of decomposition of some of the materials. As a result, I've reevaluated the method I use to be more in line with attempting to create a more stable ecosystem in the enclosures (more in the line with ecological principles). 
Now, I scrub the material and let it throughly dry for several months sheltered from the weather. You might be surprised at how long some kinds of leaves like oak persist in the cages when they haven't been boiled or wetted and microwaved. 

Some comments 

Ed


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## Dendrobait (May 29, 2005)

I think the following is important.

What are you attempting to remove when you "sterilize?"

A few things off the top of my head would be chytrid and the small chance of other parasites. Perhaps nemerteans which are an annoyance...

First thing would be to reduce risk of this stuff being in your wood/leaves in the first place. Collecting wood/leaves in a damp area near a large population of amphibians is probably not the best idea. 

Chytrid apparently does not have a resting spore-so complete drying and heating to a pretty low temperature should be enough to kill it.

In my case I collect leaflitter from areas far away from riparian habitats and during a time of year when everything is already bone dry. Same with wood. A good place would be really barren areas that fire has gone through recently if you don't mine a couple somewhat charred pieces.

I just don't use any wood that has previously been in another enclosure with amphibians.


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## Mandalore77 (Apr 5, 2014)

Ed said:


> See the attempt here that didn't do anything to the ants in a relatively thin piece of wood.. http://www.dendroboard.com/forum/pa...d-interesting-quote-confusion.html#post673702
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Hey ed I found a pet store with lots of cork wood but wen I was looking at the different pieces they seemed not the cleanest like old spider egg sacks and trace of old webs. I was reading threw this link u posted and u we're stating the vendors or pet store or safe Is it possible that not all pet stores r good to trust?????


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

I wouldn't worry about spider webs. They can be removed during the scrubbing phase, I was referring to going into pet stores and discovering urate or fecal deposits on the rockwork, wood or cork pieces that are out for sale. I've seen that in a few stores where as an animal gets sold, the cage furnishing that aren't being reused end up back on the sale floor... sometimes discounted sometimes not..... 

Some comments 

Ed


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