Use Basil stem in your aquarum!!!

I wanted to have driftwood in my aquarium for a really long time but I don't see any worth in paying what the fish store says for a bunch of sticks, so I have been trying and testing different wood and twigs but nothing worked out great. Then I came across this crazy people using different botanicals in the aquarium and as they did I did some research and found out they are really beneficial to the fishes and it also takes place in nature every single day as the leaves, twigs, seedpods fall, it realises tannins which have antibacterial and antifungal compounds and over time these fishes have learned to use these compounds to protect themself.

Finally, after finding all of these I looked at a lot of websites selling these botanicals and I was really shocked to see these botanicals costing soo much( i know this could be silly to some of you, but in India where I live these things are waste products and free of cost, you can literally find these on streets.) But by looking at those products I got an idea about w




hat and what not to use, so I went out to my garden and found amazing things like coconut husk, stem, curl, flower, many seed pods, Indian almond leaves, guava leaves, jackfruit leaves, bamboo leaves, etc.,

After looking at all of these I saw this old pile of twigs and dead plants pilled up in a corner of my yard, so I started searching in that pile to find something use full, that's when I found this amazing old holy basil(Ocimum tenuiflorum) plant which is probably dead for 2 years and lying in the sun and rain, which looked liked just the right thing for my aquarium. I took it immediately, washed it and soaked it in water for a week. Surprisingly the water didn't turn so dark, it looked better than all my previous experiments where the water was like chocolate syrup.

Then I placed it in my aquarium but I was really sceptical, as I've never tried this before and I really cared about my fishes, So I took a small tank which just had only a few guppies and added it to it, then to my surprise it worked out fine and looked great too!

My search for a good looking driftwood is done, I've found my way. Ocimum wood also has some drawbacks compared to other woods like this wood breaks very easily so it may decay faster than other wood, then you cant have Ocimum wood with larger fish because this wood have narrow branches and they are packed really tight so it may restrict the movement of these fishes. Its been just a month since I had it in my aquarium, so I can't say for sure what happens long term. Let's hope the best and wait.;)