Can't get driftwood to sink

[CrashBandit05]

I've had a piece of wood floating in my 29gal for about a month now and it won't sink! Does anyone have any suggestions, maybe anchoring it somehow...? I had two other pieces put in at the same time and they both were waterlogged fairly quick. I got the pieces of wood from a friend that used them in his aquariums at some point so I'm assuming he had no issues. Kinda stumped here!

[FLFishChik]

I’ve got spider wood in my 29g that’s not really wanting to sink. I ended up wedging it down into the gravel with a piece of lava rock on the back side. If I take the rock away, it doesn’t rise, but it hovers enough to move around. The wood has been in there 2 + months now. First pic is the spider wood, 2nd is the lava rock on the back

Edited July 25, 2022 by FLFishChik

[kahjtheundedicated]

I had to glue rocks to mine to keep them down. On one of the pieces the glue came off, and the piece floated up after 3 months in the tank ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[lefty o]

wedge t into the substrate, put a rock on it, or my favorite get a piece of slate, drill a hole in the slate, and screw the wood tot he slate. screwed to a piece of slate, it wont float any more!😎

[Brandon p]

Do you know the type of wood. I infamously have a 100 year cypress knee that has been soaking for about 18 months. It’s 24” tall. The 14” and 18” took about 8 months. If you don’t want slate which I would agree with @lefty oyou can get natural stone tile at Home Depot, lowes, and tile stores that will more closely match your substrate. I have used stone like this(size13) to hold down wood.it’s about 2” thick. Most people don’t have the ability to drill this on there own or at least a YouTube video. One this size still won’t hold down my cypress knee

[Brian Marshall]

Welcome to the "I'm waiting for the drift wood to sink club", Crash. It's a pretty big club. You pretty much have two options. Weigh it down, or wait. I'm currently got several large rocks sitting on top a lovely bit of drift wood soaking in 4 foot custom tank. They'd been soaking for a few months and one of the two pieces was still floating. Another thing I have done is to screw on to the bottom of some of my drift wood some Lead fishing weights. Some people don't like that idea of putting metallic Lead into their tanks, but I have pretty neutral PH water and am unlikely to have Lead go into the water. Very acidic or high PH water might react with the metal and if you're not comfortable with that, don't do it. Fish keeping should be about making it less stressful, not more.

Another trick I have done and also seen others do is to screw large plastic pot saucers on to the bottom of the wood. Then you cover the plastic with substrate and that will keep it from floating away. Really large bits of wood may not work like that until they're already half water logged though.

Good luck.

[Brandon p]

On 7/25/2022 at 7:26 PM, Brian Marshall said:

Welcome to the "I'm waiting for the drift wood to sink club", Crash. It's a pretty big club. You pretty much have two options. Weigh it down, or wait. I'm currently got several large rocks sitting on top a lovely bit of drift wood soaking in 4 foot custom tank. They'd been soaking for a few months and one of the two pieces was still floating. Another thing I have done is to screw on to the bottom of some of my drift wood some Lead fishing weights. Some people don't like that idea of putting metallic Lead into their tanks, but I have pretty neutral PH water and am unlikely to have Lead go into the water. Very acidic or high PH water might react with the metal and if you're not comfortable with that, don't do it. Fish keeping should be about making it less stressful, not more.

Another trick I have done and also seen others do is to screw large plastic pot saucers on to the bottom of the wood. Then you cover the plastic with substrate and that will keep it from floating away. Really large bits of wood may not work like that until they're already half water logged though.

Good luck.

For mine it’s so old,been dry so long, and cypress knees grow with very tight rings. I fresh kneee would have soaked the water up. If I was concerned I would get fake. They have great fake one. I wounded if the knees in Corys tank are fake. In Florida is not legal to cut cypress with out a permint is band that is rare 

[Flumpweesel]

Everything in the hobby is either about waiting or developing elaborate ways to reduce waiting.

I'm in the bolt slate or wedge with rocks group.

[CasualDad]

On 7/25/2022 at 4:59 PM, CrashBandit05 said:

I've had a piece of wood floating in my 29gal for about a month now and it won't sink! Does anyone have any suggestions, maybe anchoring it somehow...? I had two other pieces put in at the same time and they both were waterlogged fairly quick. I got the pieces of wood from a friend that used them in his aquariums at some point so I'm assuming he had no issues. Kinda stumped here!

Depending on the shape and size of the piece you may be able to wrap steel leaders, typically used for fishing, around the wood and then attach some split shot sinkers to the leader(s) until it decides to stay down. You can daisy chain leaders with ease and pick up lead sinkers of about any size.   

[anitstuk]

On 7/26/2022 at 7:03 AM, FLFishChik said:

I’ve got spider wood in my 29g that’s not really wanting to sink. I ended up wedging it down into the gravel with a piece of lava rock on the back side. If I take the rock away, it doesn’t rise, but it hovers enough to move around. The wood has been in there 2 + months now. First pic is the spider wood, 2nd is the lava rock on the back

If you have any fishing line laying around, you could loop some lava rocks to weigh it down... Shoving it in the substrate also works 

[Brandon p]

Bolt to a slate is tops and being here for a year it has seemed the most successful

[nabokovfan87]

On 7/25/2022 at 1:59 PM, CrashBandit05 said:

I got the pieces of wood from a friend that used them in his aquariums at some point so I'm assuming he had no issues. Kinda stumped here!

Can you share some photos?

[Hobbit]

If you have a bare bottom tank or haven’t added the substrate yet, my favorite method is using some fishing line to tie the wood to some large suction cups and then suctioning it to the bottom of the tank. I’m fine drilling a little hole in the wood for the line to go through, but a bit scared of drilling through rock/tile. 😄 The downside is the suction cups will eventually weaken and detach, but hopefully by then the wood is waterlogged enough to sink. I’ve used this method for three pieces of driftwood including the giant one that spans the length of my 55g.

[Vince C]

I know it doesn't make sense to purchase for most folks, but for smaller pieces I have used a vacuum pump that I have used for woodworking. leaving it under vacuum overnight pulls all the air out of it, and then when you release the vacuum it fills all the voids with water and most times now sinks instead of floating. 

For my larger pieces - I normally have weighed it down with a rock - or other piece of wood that doesn't float.

[CrashBandit05]

Thanks everyone for the advice and options, glad I'm part of the club😁. Since my tank is already set up, I'll try to wedge in some of the other pieces of driftwood and see if it'll stay. Or I'll just leave it floating with the Amazon frogbit!

@Brandon p  @nabokovfan87 I'll get a picture of the piece in question later this evening when I'm off work!

[CrashBandit05]

Here's the piece of wood, I can take it out for a better picture if needed. I was in the middle of dinner lol! It's about the size of my hand, fingertip to wrist.

[BAT]

Just when i thought i was alone…

i have had the same problems! Thanks for the tips!

[nabokovfan87]

On 7/26/2022 at 4:11 PM, CrashBandit05 said:

Here's the piece of wood, I can take it out for a better picture if needed. I was in the middle of dinner lol! It's about the size of my hand, fingertip to wrist.

Probably due to the shape itself.  It almost looks like plastic/treated or something.  I cant see how thick it is or anything, but it shouldn't have any issues sinking.  If it does, just put it vertical / stack some rocks under and on top of it.

Quote

If you compared the weight of wood and an equal amount, or volume, of water the sample of wood would weigh less than the sample of water. This means that wood is less dense than water. Since wood is less dense than water, wood floats in water, no matter how big or small the piece of wood is.

If you keep having issues, drill some small holes in it.   1/16 or 1/8"

Edited July 27, 2022 by nabokovfan87

[Brandon p]

On 7/26/2022 at 1:18 PM, CrashBandit05 said:

Thanks everyone for the advice and options, glad I'm part of the club😁. Since my tank is already set up, I'll try to wedge in some of the other pieces of driftwood and see if it'll stay. Or I'll just leave it floating with the Amazon frogbit!

@Brandon p  @nabokovfan87 I'll get a picture of the piece in question later this evening when I'm off work!

Idea 1

that’s a good size piece of wood. I it is llikey due to how the tree grew. I can take an Educated guess that the rings are very close together. Drilling holes probably won’t work it that is how the tree grew. Since you don’t want to take things out to place it on slate, I think it may leave one thing. And that is brave it from the top down. I wish I could see how far down it has to go. 28x 12x 9this was in this tank before I started a pore experiment . It was 28”x12”x9”. It was my son’s tank. He used some more driftwood on the brace and a long piece that traveled the length of the tank to keep it down it was not the perfect answer but solved the problem. He also didn’t want to disrupt what had done. brown the big driftwood

blue pieces holding it down. 
the long blue one was cut just fit corner to corner( he cut) that was enough bot hold it down. The second one going up went. Up to the brace that was reinforced. That one was not needed I wish I had a picture of of. He knew what he wanted and was willing to wait. It took aboutb8 months but it worked. He planted moss and ferns on the cross pieces and I looked pretty good, but amazing when he removed the braces..

 

Idea 2

@nabokovfan87maybe on the right track but not just holes. The holes filled with weighed materials. I did this for my pine wood derby car. I drilled out the front of the car and loaded the front of the car with Pennies. You could do the same with the steel bb’s
 

1000 Qty 3/8" Inch Steel Shot Slingshot Ammo Balls https://a.co/d/dxRaJPh

there is aquarium safe wood filter or a small amount of silicone, thery have smaller size I found one that would be perfect be it’s not one of the link chat rules allows. If your interested in that msg me and I’ll send it to you. You are limited really to stainless steel. Most fishing weights are mostly lead even the nice coated ones. 

[Odd Duck]

I’ve had pieces that didn’t fully sink even after nearly a year floating in my “soaking barrel” or zip tied to rocks in the tank.  I’m now in the “screw it to some slate right from the start” camp because ain’t nobody got time for that nonsense!

Here’s a pic of 2 of my wood pieces floating after being soaked for a couple months, then zip tied to rocks for many more months.  Total just over a year.  2 months in the barrel, then 10 months in the tank zip tied to rocks.  I wanted the rocks for another project (the petrified wood in my 100 G angelfish tank), told myself, “It’s been over a year in water for these, surely they’ll stay down now”.  Nope.  Most certainly did NOT stay down.  They are secured to slate pieces now.  It’s pretty easy to drill slate since it’s fairly soft as rocks go.  A concrete drill and normal electric drill will do.  The right hand piece is 2 layers of thin black slate since I have black sand.  The center piece is long and mostly flat so it didn’t have a good spot to attach the thin black slate.  I have other slate that is nearly the color of the wood (I used a left over piece from the slate stack in the tank that’s just right of center) and fastened it to the underside of the piece to keep it in the orientation I wanted.  It’s barely noticeable.

Lesson learned for me, just do the slate from the beginning.

I have another piece that I soaked for nearly 7 months in the barrel, I cut it into 2 pieces (the plan from the start to get the effect I wanted) to encourage water uptake, still floating.  Once I was ready to set up the tank, I fastened it to slate.  I knew those would be fastened to slate to keep them in the position I wanted.  I did a little tutorial on that piece in my 14 G cube build.  Link in my sig.

 

 

Edited July 27, 2022 by Odd Duck