Skull in the tank??

[EvanDavidJones]

I have a wolf skull I found in the woods a long time ago. I think it would look cool in my tank. Anyone have any ideas about risks to my fishies?? Ill do all the boiling and stuff. But does anyone have any Idea if it would leach anything into the water?? i tried google but found nothing...
Cheers

[maxpayne_lhp]

Well, over time, the thing will be messed up. I'm not sure if there's any hazardous thing about it.

[mrmoby]

I was curious about this myself so I looked around a little. Bone will decompose, but is measured in terms of years. One of the key elements in its decomposition is the bones exposure to moisture. Unfortunately, the material I found was mostly forensic information, and centered on bodies left outside but not submerged. I have heard that saltwater will fairly rapidly dissolve bone. I would think you could try it, but I woould pay close attention to your water parameters. The bone will leach calcium into the water, the question is how fast. If you regularly change your water, it may be slow enough that you would never notice a change.

[Peligrin]

Is there something you could "seal" the bone with that wouldn't affect the fish?

[yu264616]

probably epoxy or silicone, or a bunch of aquarium sealant

[garfieldnfish]

Boil it and then toss it in the tank. Jimmy Hoffa did not cause a mass fish off, so why should a wolve scull? The leaking calcium as it dissolves should not make much difference since it will take ages to do it and with regular water changes any effect of that will be close to impossible to measure.

[EvanDavidJones]

Thanks for the info guys and girls ....this site is great! Ill geter going tonight....

[Peligrin]

Jimmy Hoffa??? Pretty good!

Well, I was speaking more along the lines of preserving the skull purely on an "It's cool! I don't want it dissolving away into nothing. I want to keep it!" perspective. On the other hand I didn't want to seal it with something that would kill the fish (kind of defeats the purpose!).

So! Thank you, yu24616 for your sealant ideas, and thank you, garfieldnfish for your Jimmy Hoffa image. I needed a good laugh today!

[mrmoby]

I suppose you could seal it, but personally, I would be hesitant to put anything that had been chemically sealed in the tank. Perhaps if you were going to leave it outside something like Thompson's Water Seal would be ok. My advice would be to through it in as is, with the idea at some point it may fall apart. Also, when you boil the skull, make sure your wife / girlfriend / mom is out of the house for the day, because its gonna stink!

[hugeshoes]

If you' decide to seal it with silicone, make sure you take it out of the tank if you ever use meds with Malachite Green in them, since it is a dye that will turn your silicone blue, and make it look ugly.