Driftwood That Wont Soften Water

[Alexp08]

My water is already soft enough. I really like driftwood, soo is there any kind of driftwood or anything like it that wont soften my water?

 

[elmo666]

Not sure, but my instincts tell me you would need to get well aged wood, some from an established tank, the older then better. Hopefully then the majority of the softening capacity and tannins will have already leached out.

 

[DrRob]

Driftwood won't really soften soft water, although it may well acidify it. Water hardness is caused by carbonates or calcium/magnesium salts (depending on what sort of hardness you're talking about), getting rid of them generally requires that you react them with something that makes them precipitate (and the key there is to not then dissolve again), exchange them in some sort of ion exchange resin (like salt based water softeners) or to replace water with softer water (essentially just diluting them).
 
The problem with wood in soft water is that any tannic acids or similar will have a greater effect on the pH as there isn't so much buffer in soft water to keep the pH stable. That said, a lot of soft water fish like it acidic anyway, and it tends to be a very slow process. The slower the breakdown the better overall though, which is why we tend to use woods that are very slow to break down in water, so most of the commercially available stuff will be on the better end for not messing with the water chemistry.

 

[Mamashack]

I have a few pieces of mopani wood in most of my tanks and they haven't made much impact on the pH but, as Dr Rob referred to, that could be because I have a decent KH (2-3) to buffer any drops. Having said that my water is slightly hard with slightly alkaline pH (7.8).

 

[Alexp08]

So what would be the slowest wood to break down in water? my kh=4.5 and gh=6.5 and ph = 7.4