Is this the forum to find out if Boxwood roots are safe for an aquarium?

[KittenFishMom]

I have 2 amazing boxwod stumps with tons of different sized roots on them that I would like to use in my aquarium.  Is this the place to ask if the stumps would be safe to use in an aquarium? They have been dug out of the ground for 1.5 years and have been sitting on the lawn most in the sun in all kinds of weather.

I did a web search and found only questions about the safety of boxwood. I also found that eating the leaves can be toxic to dogs, cats, and horses. I don't know if the toxins are mostly in the leaves, that drop off and I don't know if what is toxic to mammal is apt to be toxic to a fish tanks.

Has anyone used dead aged boxwood in a tank? Boxwood is extremely dense, and was used before plastics were available for technical drawing tools, musical instruments, and slide rules and such because it didn't wrap.

If this question belongs elsewhere, please let me know.

Thanks

 

[gardenman]

As a gardener in the above water world, I can say that all parts of a living Boxwood are poisonous. Now for a root mass that's been out of the soil and air-dried, and sun-bleached, for a year or longer, eh, it's trickier. Buxene (buxine) is the primary toxin in Boxwoods. How stable is it? Is it a fish toxin? I have no idea. I truly doubt if anyone else "knows" the answer to whether it's safe or not at this point after being out of the ground and exposed this long. If you've got some "expendable" less hardy fish, you don't mind potentially losing, you could set up a test tank, pond, bucket, bathtub, whatever, and experiment with them to see if they live or not. You'll notice I said, "less hardy fish". That's because there are some fish that will tolerate pretty much anything. If you're testing toxicity on them, they might live despite there being a "toxic" level that would devastate less hardy fish. And you'll want to run the experiment for a while and rotate in some new fish from time to time. Why? The toxins may leach slowly from the wood (assuming there are any active toxins left which could be assuming a lot) and the fish constantly exposed to a slowly increasing level of toxicity, might adapt to that level of toxicity, but dropping in a previously unexposed fish might find the level toxic. I don't think anyone can give you an absolute answer, but experimentation is your best option.

I wouldn't recommend using it for an endangered species tank, but for "normal" tropical fish where if things go horribly wrong you can get replacements, using it experimentally is probably your only way to know if it is or isn't toxic at this point. 

[KittenFishMom]

@gardenman Thanks for your detailed information. I think I could set up a tank to start cycling and add some roots now so they have plenty of time to release toxins. Then after a month or so, I could add some fish and see how the fish react.  I have well over 100 guppies that I am trying to rehome. These guppies have been through a lot, so I am not sure I would call them "less hardy" at this point. Are there any fish you would recommend as "less hardy" that would be good to use to test the tank?

Another thought I had was that I could also soak the stumps in the lake, tied to my dock, to help them release the more toxins into a very large body of water.  I wish I had thought of that earlier, I could have soaked them all summer. I also soak them next summer before adding the to my 55 gallon tank.

[gardenman]

For a "less hardy" fish you'll want something cheap, that's readily available, that you don't mind keeping if they live. Neon tetras might fit the bill pretty nicely. They aren't super hardy, tough fish. They're generally pretty cheap. They're nice fish for almost any tank where the inhabitant won't eat them. If the wood releases tannins and lowers the pH it won't bother them. I'd probably look at them as an easy, readily available, cheap choice.