# Stinky bogwood



## peaches (4 Jul 2011)

I was taking a tank down and having a move around last weekend when I noticed a piece of bogwood with a sulphurous smell.  I took it out, rinsed it and left it to dry for a couple of days, still bad eggs.  So this weekend I soaked it in methylene blue.  Its still stinky. 

(Background:
 I had a problem over a month ago with one of my tropical tanks, lost a few fish including a bristlenose whilst I was away for spring bank holiday week, and I concluded it was my heater which seemed to be stuck in the on position making my tank too hot.  I sorted that out and have had no more problems with sick fish for a couple of weeks.  I am wondering whether the fatalities and the stinky bogwood are linked?)

Why would bogwood go like this?  The other pieces havent, but this is a piece that stands upright and was in a corner disguising the filter intake.  I have only had it since about Nov 2010, so its not old.  I am presuming it would be best if I threw it away?


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## Sentral (6 Jul 2011)

Strange as bogwood should be petrified, so shouldn't rot at all. They're might be organic matter in the nooks or crannies, but if it still smells odd I would probably chuck it, or just stick it in your garden!


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## dw1305 (6 Jul 2011)

Hi all,
Yes, it is that the wood has some areas that are soft and not fully lignified and have started to rot. The smell is because areas of wood are porous and the water in them has become de-oxygenated (due to bacterial action) and hydrogen sulphide has been produced. Sap wood will contain sugars and cellulose which are rapidly degraded, but heart wood will contain many fewer compounds that are easily accessible and contain a lot of lignin. All wood will organically degrade eventually, but we usually use bits that are either saturated with tannins (real bog-wood) or are very hard and lignified naturally  like Mopani wood, or the heartwood from hardwood trees like Oak and Teak.  The hardest and most slowly degradable heart wood occurs in the major tree roots. 

You can think of a tree like a "living sarcophagus", it is only the outer most skin of the cambial layer that is alive, and this layer divides producing the bark, sap-wood and the meristems and leaf primordia of the growing tree. The older wood is progressively entombed in the tree trunk, and the cells are now dead, but they carry on with their primary functions of support and forming the vessels and elements of the xylem, through which water is drawn up through the tree in the transpiration stream. As more new wood is grown, the oldest cells become progressively more gummed up with lignin, a complex carbohydrate which is difficult to degrade, until all the vessels are filled and the wood is solid and dense. This is the wood you want. In bog-wood even if the wood wasn't fully lignified when it was smothered by the peat, tannins from the peat will have filled any remaining voids.

If you scrape off all the soft bits of wood it may be all right to re-use. I've occasionally had this happen with drift wood, and quite often a good go at the wood with a screw driver and a stiff brush will remove al the decomposed material and leave a pale heart wood "skeleton". 

cheers Darrel


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## peaches (8 Jul 2011)

There are no soft bits.  But there are cracks.  I presume this is where it has turned nasty.  I have left it to dry after soaking in methylene blue and it has stopped being stinky.  I will try wetting it again and see what happens.


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