I have a 90 gallon aquarium where I intend to make a thin rock wall from styrofoam and concrete.
I also have driftwood over 3 feet long with lots of small bits and bark flaking off (I picked it out of the river a few years ago, and it has been left outside for years). Were these pieces to be used, I would want to make them stable, so that nothing flakes off over the years that it would be in the aquarium. A challenge to this would be how to mount the wood all together and still get it into the tank. The center brace is in the way.
The bark flaking off of the wood looks interesting, and if covering the surfaces with clear epoxy would preserve the present state, I would like to do that. Since the wood is very dry, it would definitely float. Probably it could all be glued together into one piece and mounted to slate tile to keep it submerged, with the slate being covered by the sand/gravel substrate. Being able to get the whole thing into the tank may be possible if the final step of attaching the wood to the slate could be done in the tank with a stainless steel bolt or two and removable nut(s). I may want to rescape in the future, without destroying the piece.
Does anyone here have experience with clear epoxy resin, and whether it would work for this project? It would need to keep the flakey bits from being dislodged were the wood to need to be cleaned with a brush. Could epoxy resin be applied with a paint brush to achieve this?