Natural Wood Hides

[Bruiser]

My ball's hide right now is synthetic. I am moving her into her new tank and a buddy of mine gave me a couple of natural wood hides. They are half-circles with natural bark on top. Should I be concerned using natural wood? I seem to remember reading somewhere on this forum there was an issue with putting bark in a tank.

[MrLang]

They should be fine - but wood holds micro-organisms (germs and bugs) much more readily than synthetic. Synthetic is also significantly easier to clean. I guess those two things go hand in hand.


It's fine, just be sure to clean it. I can't offer suggestions on how to effectively sterilize wood without leaving chemicals around afterwards, though.

GL

[Rickys_Reptiles]

They're fine - just hard to clean.

[Bruiser]

I boiled the snot out of them last night. Hopefully that will be enough.

Thanks.

[Rickys_Reptiles]

I boiled the snot out of them last night. Hopefully that will be enough.

Thanks.

Don't think it would be. Boiling at 100 °C (212 °F) isn't going to disinfect.

[MrLang]

You can bake at like 175 or something for an hour or 2 to sterilize but then cleaning things like poo or blood will be much trickier