Bog Wood Missery

[lemond68]

i bought a piece of bog wood for my tank soaked it overnight and placed it in, it looked nice the next 2 days i bough a second piece and soaked it for 6 hours and placed it in the water...

now it is brownish... checked the pH it is 6.6-6.8

help, I am going to do a water change.... should I add baking soda, should i wait?

help

 

[TetraLinz]

Decorative wood often does release tannins into the water. Soaking it overnight doesn't do much IME. If you want a clear-water tank, presoak wood for a few weeks, rather than hours. Use boiling water to open the pores. It releases the tanins sooner.

However, the tannins are completely harmless to fish, and most actually prefer the water to be a bit stained. What was your pH before adding the bogwood.

 

[LauraFrog]

What fish do you have in the tank? If there's nothing in there that REQUIRES hard, alkaline water you should be fine with that pH, it's not really that low.

 

[rhostog]

I've had a piece of bogwood soaking for a month, and it's still staining the water in the bucket. I've only washed it in boiling water once though, and that did seem to take out a lot of colour - if I wanted it sooner I would use boiling water repeatedly. If you have carbon in your filter, that will remove the colour eventually, but water changes are probably a good idea. Bogwood can lower pH, and too rapid a change in pH can be harmful to fish, so I would check that yours isn't dropping too quickly - you might need to take a piece out and/or do some water changes to avoid problems.

Oh - and if you decide to take it out and soak it for longer, make sure it's completely covered with water - the first time I soaked it, I left a piece sticking up above the waterline, and it grew some weird mouldy stuff on it.

 

[dave_paton]

I have two very large pieces of bogwood in my tank. I have a bag of premium grade carbon which gets rid off all the tannins in the tank. With my second piece of bogwood i took it home, washed it off for a bit then added it that day, with no tannin release thanks to the carbon.

 

[Esfa]

i want some tannins, but all my wood has leaked dry. be sad for me

 

[lemond68]

thanks for all the replies,

I did a 50% water change, and the the water cleared... a little bit. The PH was 7.2 before it plummeted, free-falled, reached it's nadir at 6.8 (perhaps 6.7 after the water change)

is that a big drop? which pH is dangerous?

i have a 72g community tank, with 3 clown loach, 3 kuhli loach, 2 yoyo loach, 2 RTS, 1 whip tail catfish, and 5 angel fish....

thanks for all the feedback