Rhododendron Driftwood As An Accessory For your Aquarium
Having driftwood can make an aquarium appear more dazzling.
Driftwood is a crucial thing to make the fish tank environment looks natural.
In addition, adding driftwoods to your aquarium can give your fish plenty of places to hide.
We are going to show you a type of driftwood called Rhododendron. Is Rhododendron driftwood suitable to be put in your aquarium?
You are going to find out if this type of aquarium driftwood is safe for your fish environment.
What is driftwood again?
Driftwoods come from trees; for some reason, they have been in the bodies of water such as the Lake, rivers, and Ocean.
They usually get washed onto a beach or a shore of the Lake, Sea, and River.
As they have been in the water for a while, the fungi, bacteria, and other pathogens have made them rot and only leaving the cellulose.
In some areas, the existence of driftwoods can become a significant annoyance. However, driftwood can become a good shelter for fish and other water species.
Driftwood can be utilized as decorative furniture, and they are prevalent in fish tanks.
As in fish tanks decoration, there are many types of driftwoods that you can put in your aquarium.
We are going to focus on discussing Rhododendron driftwood as aquarium décor.
Is Rhododendron driftwood safe for my fish?
Rhododendron is driftwood in yellow color. Some of these driftwoods have substances called grayanotoxins.
This substance is toxic in that it can cause stomach, nerve, and heart damage in animals and humans.
For this reason, the Rhododendron driftwood is not recommended to be used as aquarium décor.
There has no exact prove whether the Rhododendron driftwood harms fish and what concentration in the driftwood is toxic, but you should not risk it.
Water Azalea is a part of Rhododendron driftwood, and it is sold with the name “Spiderwood.”
This type of Rhododendron driftwood comes from Asia and is appropriate to be used in the aquarium.
Water Azalea often has fine-looking branching structures.
In our opinion, Rhododendron is safe to use for aquascaping
Still, please remember, test with a small amount of fish, especially the tiny fish, as long it follows the proper curing process.
It is better safe than sorry. So if a bad thing happens, you’re not going to miss a lot.
We hope this information will help you determine most only what woods you want to use or combine in your aquascape design, and we also hope it will help you which wood that you needed to avoid.
In Summary
In conclusion, here are the things we learned from Rhododendron driftwood, they are:
- There are many types of driftwood for your aquarium décor, but many kinds of Rhododendron driftwoods are not safe for your fish tanks due to the toxic substance they have.
- “Spiderwood” or Water Azalea is a type of Rhododendron that is relatively safe for your aquarium.
- If you’re not sure what type of your driftwood is, as a precaution, you better learn how to clean your driftwood properly before sink it in your fish tank.
When you recently returned to aquascaping and have several tanks that you need to designing. Below we will put some aquascape designs as a reference and where you can get that design.
Dimensions 91 × 46 × 43 cm
Aquascape Title Design: Autumn arrives in the Minnehaha Creek
Water Volume on Tank: 152 L
Background: Expanding foam is covered in a mixture of peat, Crushed aquatic soil substrate, and creek sand.
Lighting: Fluval 2.0 LED light
Filtration: Canister filter with plumbing into the background
Plants: No plants are used
Fish in this Tank: Etheostoma Caeruleum, Gambusia holbrooki
Materials:
Locally collects river stone.
Pebbles.
Sand.
Spider wood to mimic roots.
Various fall leaves and branches.
Additional Note:
The Minnehaha Creek influences this aquascape, A national park that’s the Glen Echo Park Aquarium’s home, where it is displayed Permanently.
Spider wood was utilized to imitate the tree roots origins expanding in the location.
These types prevail in the Potomac River in addition to all tributaries upstream of Washington DC.
This fish tank design is to represent the charm of the Minnehaha in the autumn.
