Yellow Water - Wood?

[pmilne]

Hope someone can offer advice!

Ive bought a tank, (Duo Deep 600), filled it with gravel and water. Filter in, heater in and on. Added the water purifer and bacteria starter. Left for about 2 weeks. Water had a slightly yellow/brown colour.

Changed water (25%), cleaned filter in tank water.

Bought some rock and mangrove root from zooplus, added and the colour seemed to get more yellow/brown. Ive changed the water again (~25%) and was fine initially, but colour has redeveloped.

Im suspecting the mangrove root and i suppose i should just take it out and see what happens.

Theres no fish in it but its been a month and im itching to get some in!

Any advice?
Thanks

Philip

 

[KittyKat]

The tannins in the wood dye the water a brown colour. They are not harmful and a lot of fish benefit from them.

To me, it does not sound like you are cycling your tank.. are you? Most bacteria starter is a gimmick. For bacteria to develop, you have to feed them ammonia. Please do look at fish-less cycling.

 

[amyw2008]

I'm pretty sure the yellow/brown colour water would be tannins from the wood...

An expert will be along soon (hopefully) to either confirm or tell you the right answer...

If it is then I don't think they are harmful to fish

 

[anon02]

The colouring could either be dust off the gravel, if you didn`t wash it before putting in the tank or it could be tannins leeching out of the wood

More importantly, the filter aid products are notoriously unreliable and your tank is highly likely to be uncycled. The advice of the majority of forum members would be to go through a fishless cycle, the instructions for this can be found in The Beginners Resource Centre in the pinned topics at the top of the forum page

 

[Whitey_144]

sounds like the wood, but personally i like the look of a bit of yellow on some setups.

i believe some people boil the wood and leave to soak for 24hours to reduce the amount of tannins that will be adsorbed into the tank water

 

[pmilne]

thanks for all your replies.

i dont have any fish in the tank yet but ill read the fishless cycling

ive changed the water twice (25% water change)

the gravel was washed well.



tannins in the wood seems to be the answer.

thanks!

 

[Ryan12]

You could leave it in the tank as it will go away after a bit of time. Ad many people have mentioned before, it is possible the tannins have positive benefits to some fish. It might not make your tank look "clean", but it sure will look more natural.

 

[waterdrop]

Its possible this first month has not been totally wasted. Some of those bacteria in a bottle products have ammonia in the bottle and using it could have helped a few bacteria get started.

pmilne, there is a whole huge thing that is core to learning the hobby that we like to help beginners with here. It seems really weird at first and involves growing two specific species of bacteria in the filter. This makes the filter hardware do its job, its kind of like you need software for computer hardware to work.

Its fun to read other beginners threads and see this stuff in action and of course to do your homework and read the Nitrogen Cycle, Fishless Cycle and Fish-In Cycle articles among others in the Beginners Resource Center. Working on this stuff and learning it is one of the things that will eventually help make you a hobbyist rather than just a pet shop browser. The members here are great at sharing this info.

One of the most important first things a beginner needs is a good liquid-reagent based test kit. Most of us like and use the API Freshwater Master Test Kit, but there are others that work too. Often one of the next adventures is finding the right type of simple household ammonia, the stuff that feeds the bacteria we want to grow.

~~waterdrop~~