Baking Wood

[Sean90]

My cousin has a piece of bogwood and he wants to kill the bacteria on it. He hasn't any room in the freezer and is soaking the piece of wood at the moment with treatments.

He is considering baking it in the oven to kill the bacteria and stop any possibility of fungus. I have never tried this method and wondered anyone has any thoughts.

Thanks

 

[jane1187]

I'd be careful, he may end up setting it on fire! I would be worried about the 'treatments' he is using than anything else. Many chemical treatments, even ones sold for the aquarium, are toxic to fish and amphibians. Soaking the wood in them may cause a build up of them in the fibres, which will be released when placed in the vivarium/aquarium.

Is it bogwood from a pet shop or something? Killing off the bacteria shouldn't be necessary, bearing in mind too that when it is put into an aquarium or vivarium it will become re-colonised naturally with bacteria again, making the current excercise sort of pointless I guess.

 

[Coastal Groovin]

Bake it for 2 hours at 200 degrees. Stay in the room during this ENTIRE TIME just in case of fire Paper ignites at 451 degrees Fahrenheit, or 233 degrees Celsius. Anything under that should also be safe for wood but still stay in the room with a bucket of water ready just in case. It's not worth the risk for wood for a tank if you left and it did ignite.

 

[twistedfisher]

i recommend 225 degrees for 3 hours and a lavish basting with bleach

 

[Sean90]

Thanks very much will pass this on to him.

 

[mr cyclone]

Boil it in a pan for 20 mins .kills everything and helps with tannings

 

[Ominojacu]

Baking wood produces gasses that need to be vented. I leave the oven door open a little and keep a fan running.

 

[JAK]

Baking wood produces gasses that need to be vented.

You're absolutely right, baking wood, even at relatively low temperatures, will produce methanol vapor (wood alcohol). The fumes are extremely flammable and exceptionally toxic. I don't know if they still do it but chemistry classes used to demonstrate this by igniting the fumes of wood heated in a vented glass test tube. A closed oven or broiler with top heat is an invitation for disaster.

Additionally, it's worth noting that temperatures lower than several hundred degrees Fahrenheit will require more than 10 hours to eliminate even common bacteria. Heat is an effective method of sterilization in microbiology because very high temperatures (even direct flaming) are applied for long periods of time. Short intervals of low temperature will often serve to do little more than kill off common bacteria and culture more robust, potentially more hazardous, strains.

UV sterilization is a much more successful and safer method of sterilization for wood. If one doesn't wish to purchase an expensive UV sterilization device (the one in my microscopy lab is very small and was still quite expensive) simply invert a glass or PET plastic container over the wood (place on a reflective surface to cover more area at once) and expose each side to full sun for not less than 24 hours total. Yes it will take a long time and require the weather to cooperate but a long wait seems preferable to a fire or an exotic strain of e. Coil or what have you.

Heating in an oven is likely to do little more than sterilize seeds and drive off any higher organisms that may be present, which might be what is desired but please don't think the oven in ones kitchen is an effective means of killing the myriad bacteria that inhabit the average piece of wood removed from a bog.

Posted from the newt-phone!

 

[kjnorman]

When I worked in an amphibian research lab, we sterilized leaf litter (including small pieces of wood) to add to our Rana pipiens tanks by baking them overnight in a very low oven (the biology department had one that could go as low as 85 degrees Celsius), and this worked beautifully.

I have done the same thing with wood for snake enclosures at home by just setting the oven to 'barely on' and leaving it in all day while I was around. Worked fine for the snakes, but I have not done this at home for an aquatic animal.

 

[Jennewt]

...a very low oven (the biology department had one that could go as low as 85 degrees Celsius)

85C is about 185F

 

[JAK]

85C is about 185F

And what's more it's not very low, the average consumer oven can be set to 170F. The average microbiology lab will have a cool oven that can be set as low as 75-80F, such ovens are invaluable for various live cultures or particular sorts of slide preparation. These sorts of temperatures over a few hours will not sterilize wood on a microbial level, which seems to have been the OPs intent (I can't imagine considering using bleach for worry about planarians). One might describe heating wood in an oven as blanching rather than sterilizing. It should be enough to limit the accidental introduction of snails, worms, larvae, or parasites but will not prevent the introduction of some microbial hazards or hardy fungal spores.

Posted from the newt-phone!