Mopani Wood

[pjhaines2000]

Dear All,

Am very new to the whole Tropical Fish keeping lark and made my first mistake on Sunday. I bought a Juwel Rio 125 on Saturday plus all substrate and a few plants etc. I also bought a lovely piece of Mopani wood, which I soaked for around 30 hours before I put it in the tank. Of-course, all you guys know what happened next, tea coloured water.

I've removed the wood and cleaned and refilled the tank which is as clear as a bell again now.

The Wood has been soaking for the last 3 days. The water has been from boiling to cold and has been changed about 3 times daily, although today i'm leaving the water so I can see how clear it is tonight. There's actually been no colouration of the water in the soaking trough i'm using since I've taken the wood out of the tank.

My question is this, because i'm not soaking in continually warm water (I go to work and it obviously cools down) is the reason why there seems to be no more leakage this, ie straight back into the warm tank for a couple of days and it'll start leeching??

My other question is, i've obviously researched the whole wood soaking thing on the net and as always get lots of conflicting advice. Some say soaking for a few days will work, some say a few weeks and i;ve seen some suggesting soaking for a few months?

Can anyone offer any advice or does the leeching relate to individual pieces of wood and i'll have to find out with trial and error.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,

Paul.

 

[Shrimper]

When I soaked the small bit for my Betta tank it took probably 2/3 weeks to get down to an acceptable level. What i did was pour a couple kettles of boiling water over the wood when i got home from work and left the bucket to cool down in the garage and repeated every other day until it cleared up. Warm to Boiling water brought more tannins out than cold water. Another thing i did was scrub it a bit with a brand new nail brush which seemed to help remove some tannin too, the water was always darker than before I started.

There is no definitive time for how long it will take for all the Tannin to come out of the wood, it varies from piece to piece.

 

[pjhaines2000]

When I soaked the small bit for my Betta tank it took probably 2/3 weeks to get down to an acceptable level. What i did was pour a couple kettles of boiling water over the wood when i got home from work and left the bucket to cool down in the garage and repeated every other day until it cleared up. Warm to Boiling water brought more tannins out than cold water. Another thing i did was scrub it a bit with a brand new nail brush which seemed to help remove some tannin too, the water was always darker than before I started.

There is no definitive time for how long it will take for all the Tannin to come out of the wood, it varies from piece to piece.

Cheers Shrimper, i'll keep an eye on it for a while and keep soaking and scrubbing, I can't be doing with emptying the tank again as I'm not a lover of the tannin stained water.

Many thanks,

Paul

 

[ollyhtafc]

I boiled mine.Took about half an hour.Some tannins still came out when it was put into the aquarium but nothing that couldn't be solved with %20 water changes about twice a week.