Driftwood Staining Water? Any suggestions

[Feisty]

I have a piece of driftwood that I put in a tank and I rinsed and soaked it for a week before putting it in my tank.

Its lightly staining the water in my tank that always looked bright. I am thinking of pulling it out. I hate that the water looks tinted....

Any ideas on what to do with it so it does not stain my water? Can I boil it? Would that even help?

 

[Darth Scohin]

you can boil it but keep in mind I boiled my wood in my 75gal and it kept leeching tannins for months same with my 180gal really where there's wood there's tannins

 

[philfreenode]

The tint is tannins and if you do not use activated carbon, or your carbon is old, you can add new activated carbon to your filter and it will clear it.

Also large water changes will remove it from the water. eventually it should give off less and less.

http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=369124

 

[Darth Scohin]

Even with carbon it'll dye the tank at least yellow but it'll look clear IMO/IME

 

[Feisty]

Back at both you guys.... Tannins should stay in wine! Interesting.

I don't have carbon, but sounds like that would help. I did notice that when I do my weekly water changes it helps, but by the end of the week, its back up again.

Thanks for replying!

 

[NightStorm]

I'm setting up a new 125 and have some manzanita wood soaking in a 45 gallon trash can right now. I'm a clean crispy water kind of guy too.

I'm following one forum member's advice........I replace the water in the can every 24 hrs and refill it with hot tap water. I hope doing this for a few weeks will leach off a lot of the tannins. This technique worked for the forum member I just mentioned. I hope it will work for me too. But it's important to note that manzanita has a tendency to leach off less tannins than other sorts of wood. That's what I've read anyway.

Maybe you can try this technique too.

But I personally think that soaking the wood for just a week is not long enough if you don't like tannins. You gotta do it for longer than that.

 

[uncwnells]

definetly add some carbon to your filtration. when soaking it, always change the water out as many times as possible, use the hottest water that you can!

 

[Spiritofthesoul]

Activated carbon is the way to go

 

[Fanlie]

I was too water yellow with driftwood.
I have 25% water change each 2 days. 2weke later water still better. or add each 3/4 week new carbon.

 

[aclockworkorange]

A lot of fish like tannins. It might not be the most popular thing on MFK but tannins can have a lot of benefit to fish. A lot of fresh water in nature, the amazon for example, is NOT clear.