Making a Forest Paludarium from Firewood

Can firewood create incredible aquascapes? That's what I want to discover. I recently got some and naturally my twisted art brain immediately went there. Can you blame me though? Look at all this great texture. This oak log was the first to grab my attention. I know it could be great for something, but it's a little large for what I envision. I'll stick to smaller stuff like this. Let's not get ahead of ourselves though. Is firewood even safe to use in the first place? The short answer is yes because the wood ideal for burning is generally what's best for aquatic environments. Cured hardwoods. Most hardwoods like oak, ash, birch, and cherry are safe. That said, walnut and softwoods like pines should not be used. A crucial component to this is if the wood has been cured, which is simply a drying process to remove moisture. That can happen naturally from sun exposure or in the case of firewood, air or kiln drying. Properly cured wood is a must in aquaria, otherwise it will rot and foul the water. I believe this is why there are so many stories about collected wood being unsafe. My advice would be to only use something if you know exactly what it is and how it's been cured. Worst case, you just see how the wood reacts to water before adding livestock. If it begins to smell rotten or is visibly degrading in a short amount of time, then it shouldn't be used. A caveat to all this though is to get your wood from a trusted source you know isn't using pesticides or anything like that. As always though, do your own research and use your own discretion. I find that oak is comparable to what's sold as quote unquote aquarium driftwood and that's what I'm using here along with cherry and apple. Most of my pieces are slivers, so I must scape around that. I'm envisioning something similar to a vertical dragonstone type scape. Picture something reminiscent of the firebelly toad However, I don't have enough pieces that are sized like that and most of them look like this, so I'm gonna have to take matters into my own hands. After splitting and breaking the wood down, I had a good selection. The issue is that they're rough and would easily cause splinters. This isn't ideal, but it's an easy fix. I picked off any loose bits. Although time consuming, a wire brush drill bit quickly removed the sharp pieces. A stiff wire brush finished the job. The combination of these simple techniques made them smooth to the touch and thus safe to work with. That means they're finally ready to use and what I'll be scaping in is this 15 gallon tank. Let's get to work. I sorted the pieces by size to better understand what I had. This selection is excellent, but I knew effectively using them would be easier said than done. My hope was to create a proper foundation with the largest logs. However, most weren't flat and didn't sit well. This board was my solution. It allowed me to transfer a straight line on the logs while they sat at the desired angle. Now that's more like it. This log was especially bad and greatly benefited from the adjustment. Only a few more logs were required for the foundation. I tacked them together with hot glue so I could easily remove the three foundational pieces and continue scaping outside the aquarium. The next challenge was bridging the gaps between. As before, I secured everything with hot glue, which isn't my long-term solution. It's just an easy way to add stability for now. Eventually it came together nicely. However, it required more strength in the form of expanding foam. Applying it between all the gaps did the trick. I just had to scrape off visible sections from the front. Afterward, it was just a matter of adding smaller detail pieces. Now I have a single standalone structure that will make for an incredible scape. Following the wood grain to create uniformity made this possible. However, it will look even more cohesive in the water with the details and plants. Before I can do that, I got to get it mounted onto this rock so it remains underwater. I marked for the scape on the flagstone so I'd know where to drill. These holes allowed me to lock it down from underneath with stainless steel screws. Heavy rocks in a tank can get sketchy. It's best to distribute their weight evenly with something like a crate-like diffuser. In theory it would work, but I was nervous about it floating. Thankfully it didn't float and I think it looks awesome with water. However, I don't really care for how large this stone is. We could swap that out later on, but while it has water, might as well see how the flow goes. The filter includes a vinyl tube to create a spray bar above the hard scape. I didn't want it to flow like this though. Instead, I drilled through the wood to lock the tubing in with zip ties, keeping a low profile. The water was running when I went to make the holes and I was not expecting this. You better believe I had water off when I added the rest. Alright, let's see how this goes. I could work with that. A little messy, but we can make it work. Draining it down allowed me to swap out the stone for two smaller ones. I was nervous they wouldn't be heavy enough, but they worked well. Time to dial in the spray bar. I tied fishing line at the start and threaded it onto a zip tie like a sewing needle. This made it easy to raft damp sphagnum moss around the holes to calm the water and to create a growing surface for plants. Taking my time to get it right yielded great results. I just had to stuff moss in a few bare spots to divert water. The result is an all-in-one fully functional hard scape. Now that I know it's going to work, I got it moved over to the rack here and it's just a matter of making it look nice. Ferns up top seemed like an obvious choice. They grow well within sphagnum moss and complement the wood exceptionally well. They just look so majestic on the hard scape, don't you think? I also peppered java moss in this area, which will eventually cover all the sphagnum moss. The hard scape down in the water was begging for epiphytes, Anubias to be specific. Pops of green within the cracks nearly completed the look. A few other plants will also reside here, so I added substrate bags accordingly. I didn't want visible substrate, especially with all this white sand. Planting Cryptocoryne near the substrate bags brought even more life to the scape. Although I didn't plan for stones, a few chunks of black lava rock brought things to the next level. I decided it would look better with more detail. These spiderwood branches went crazy on it. I figured while I'm at it, I might as well add some salaginella and floating plants. A firewood paludarium. I had a general idea of how it would look and I'm not disappointed. Although similar to a dragonstone design, I've never seen anything quite like it. It's odd because somehow it appears naturalistic and ethereal simultaneously. The high contrast probably plays into that. I even experimented with one of my old lights and did this. I probably like the original way better, but it's still something cool to experiment with. What do you think? Using any driftwood will result in tannins, which will surely be the case here. I don't know if I'll prefer that or how it looks now. Either way, I decided to exclude inhabitants for now. All of the woods I used tend to get a film on them, similar to spiderwood which I also used. It only happens initially and isn't harmful, but I don't like dealing with it while anyone's in the tank. It's just a personal preference. I'm curious though, if you had this tank, what would you put in it? Are some ideas better left unexplored? I'll let you be the judge. Me personally, I'd say firewood can create incredible aquascapes.