Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was wondering if it was ok to disinfect wood in boiling tap water. I keep thinking the wood will soak up some of the chlorine.

I might be wrong but i think the amount of clorine in water would disipate pretty quickly in the air and i know boiling water disipates it pretty quickly.

Just my 0.02 I could be wrong.
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Thanks

Well, here's my take on disinfecting wood. I don't - unless it has come from another vivarium (disease and parasite transfer) or came from a saltwater environment (residual salt leaching out into viv). Doesn't really make much sense, would you try to disinfect your moss? ... or oak leaves? ... or plants? How about when we put a piece of termite infested wood in the viv?
Most of what you kill when you disinfect are probably things that are beneficial to your vivarium such as springtails, spider and wood mites, fungii, mold, moss, algea, worms,
nematodes ...etc.
Without most of these to break it down, frog poop and substrate remain exactly that.
Yes, eventually all of these will be introduced to the viv one way or the other but why wait?
You would also be suprised what grows from some good wood. I've gotten some great moss from uncleaned cork bark and some great plants and ferns from uncleaned wood.
I understand the advantages of disinfecting but think they are minimal.

My 2 cents - take it or leave it.

Donn

Well one of my desert tarantulas got a new terreria and I am going to use his wood I had to wipe it off and clean it becuase it was covered in webbing. It was always pretty dry but I wanted to clean it out anyway.

After thinking this over, I realized that it's probably a bit irresponsible of me to have posted this without saying that this doesn't mean that I think every newbie should just start putting things in a viv without disinfecting it.
I think beginners should stick to the basic rules. Once the basics are learned, then move on to some experimentation.

Donn