[Nataku]

I was looking into getting a piece of driftwood to stick in my 10 gallon that I could stick some java fern on (the java fern would come from a LFS) but while looking around for appropriate driftwood to go in my tank, none of the pieces in the store were all that great looking, and they want ridiculous prices for them! 40 bucks for a roughly 12 inch long piece of driftwood?!

Now I live very close to the ocean (literally, I walk a block down to the end of my street, and I'm there) and we get driftwood that washes up on our sand fairly often.

What is the difference between driftwood that can be bought in an LFS compared to the stuff I could just go pick up off the beach for free? Is there a difference?

Is there any reason I shouldn't go find some driftwood of my own from the beach?

If I get driftwood from the beach, what methods/precautions should I take to make sure the wood is safe for tank use? Should I boil it? Bake it? Is there something I should put on it? I mean, what do the LFS do to make their driftwood 'ready for aquarium use' that a piece of driftwood I pluck off the beach doesn't already have?

 

[Nataku]

Thank you for the information (I saw your other post earlier in another topic about your incident while scanning for info about this).

But what is "properly treated?"
If any piece of wood can contain toxic chemicals, then it's just as likely any piece I get from a store could also contain chemicals (actually, considering one of the LFS had their driftwood selection laying on their floor which I know they clean regularly with bleach and other cleaning solutions, I guess I can mark them off the list). What is it that a store does to make their wood "properly treated?" Is there anything they do that I can't just as easily do at home? Do they have some special secret method to 'purifying' the wood? Or is just slapping a price tag sticker on it magically making it safe for aquariums?

Likewise, does that mean if I found a piece of mangrove driftwood on the beach, would that be the preferred driftwood to use in a tank? We have plenty of mangroves around this part of the coastline, so I imagine that a fair bit of the driftwood may well already be from those trees anyhow, but I intend upon researching various common commercially sold driftwoods and mangrove roots to make sure I can identify different species.