joey020283;1126000; said:
boil it if you can, or boil the water befor you put it in the bucket and change the water more often. when i prepar driftwood, i change the water 3 times a day with very hot or boiled water. this speeds it up alot. make sure to scrub it also. after all this i still found it to leach small amounts of tannins into the water, so i eventually switched to malaysian drift wood. i only had to prepare that for 4 for days and then it was fine. plus its half the cost of mopani and seems to look more natual as it is all one colour.
I've had the same experience with mopani as malaysian, even after boiling either one. Big piece of malaysian I just put in my 90g without doing anything to it and the water didn't really get much of a brown tint. The little piece of malaysian I put in my 10g I boiled for a long time and it still turns the water brown. I think maybe the individual piece of wood has some to do with how bad it is.
Most of my mopani I put in without doing anything to, and yeah it turns the water a light brown, but water changes keep it from getting that bad. It doesn't hurt the fish or change the PH on my tanks so I don't worry about it *shrug*.
Tonymofo, some of the mopani I have has been in my tank for months and the water still has a light tint from the tannins, so you're gonna be waiting a long time. Try boiling it and it might help, but most likely it will still cause a slight bit of tint, just not as much. It can't hurt anyway.