Driftwood...again.

[BristlenosePleco]

About a month or so back I posted a question about driftwood and how to properly prepare it for a tank. I got some great replies, thank you BTW, and about a week and a half maybe two weeks ago I decided to start the whole submerging process, and its been going fine so far I think. I do full water changes to the bucket its in every two days and the water is still turning brown. Like dark brown. I was wondering if thats normal? Because someone had said like five days at the most, or maybe could this piece have gone bad? If thats possible?

 

[Newman]

the wood is fine.

how long have you had it in the bucket like that? if its already been in there for a few weeks, just rinse it off and throw it in your tank and put some active carbon into your filter. easy as that.

 

[littletankbigworld]

It is releasing inert tannins into the water. It's totally normal.

 

[BristlenosePleco]

So the filter takes the colour out water?

 

[littletankbigworld]

Large water changes will take the color out of the water. I'm not sure how much the filter will help. Newman? Your water will probably not be normal overnight.

 

[BristlenosePleco]

Yeah thats what I figured. I really wanted it to be over night. lol

 

[Lotus]

Some wood can take a couple of months to stop leaching visible tannins.

 

[bassbonediva]

Can I add a question to this? What about getting the wood to sink? I've had several pieces of DW soaking for a little over a month in a big 35gal Rubbermaid plastic bucket. Two of the pieces are rather large, and the other three pieces are long, but slender (I have one piece that is a small chunk, about 5"x5"). I've been changing the water twice a week (I know, not enough to really get the tannins out quickly) with HOT water each time. The water is now the color of weak tea when I take it out, which is good, but the wood STILL won't sink. The biggest piece is going in my 55gal and it's HEAVY, but still won't sink. Any thoughts? I have heard that it takes up to a month for the DW to soak up enough water to sink, but it's been maybe six weeks since I started soaking this wood.

 

[OrangeCones]

Some wood never sinks, sometimes it takes months or years to get it truly water-logged.

If its small enough (sounds like yours isn't), you can boil it on the stove. I have a dedicated old chili pot for this purpose (hubby calls it the 'stump stew pot' LOL). Boiling will open up the pores of the wood and allow more water to enter, as well as spead up the tannin release process.

You can get a larger rock and tie it to the driftwood with fishing line. Put the rock UNDER the driftwood and bury it in the gravel to hide it if you want to. This will hold the wood down and over time, you can cut the fishing line once its dense enough. Don't make the mistake some have made and try to put the rock on TOP of the driftwood. If it were to shift, the rock could fall and crack the tank's glass.

 

[sparky0413]

speaking of water, I have a question. Our water was cloudy so we have done a 75% water change, using water from a pur water filter pitcher, and also tap water, then we put in stress coat and cycle. water still cloudy. how long will it take to get it clear?

 

[bassbonediva]

If its small enough (sounds like yours isn't), you can boil it on the stove. I have a dedicated old chili pot for this purpose (hubby calls it the 'stump stew pot' LOL). Boiling will open up the pores of the wood and allow more water to enter, as well as spead up the tannin release process.

You can get a larger rock and tie it to the driftwood with fishing line. Put the rock UNDER the driftwood and bury it in the gravel to hide it if you want to. This will hold the wood down and over time, you can cut the fishing line once its dense enough. Don't make the mistake some have made and try to put the rock on TOP of the driftwood. If it were to shift, the rock could fall and crack the tank's glass.

LOL @ the "stump stew pot"!! Yeah, this piece is about 25" tall and 13" wide, so it's not boil-able on the stove.

I *think* that with the way I want to position the piece in the tank, it might stay down because it'll be wedged under the edge/lip of the tank and almost against the front glass (the tank is only 21" tall).

It's the piece on the right in this pic:

And this is a close-up of it:

And the other two pieces in the tank...the center piece is soaking rather nicely (has only been soaking for a couple of weeks, but already the water is only a weak tea color and it isn't floating as much) and I haven't started soaking the thin, oddly-shaped piece because the only large container I have is soaking the other pieces :

 

[littletankbigworld]

speaking of water, I have a question. Our water was cloudy so we have done a 75% water change, using water from a pur water filter pitcher, and also tap water, then we put in stress coat and cycle. water still cloudy. how long will it take to get it clear?

How large is your tank? What are the occupants? Water parameters? It sounds like it's either overstocked, not cycled, or both.

 

[Doomhed]

I used to heat my pieces over a fire pit (or large industrial kiln for larger pieces) before soaking them if they were not store-bought. I actually used to make driftwood pieces for local petstores too this way. I lived near a bog so it was easy to just ninja logs from the swamp.

if you have access to a propane powered torch I would have soaked, then heat-kissed the wood to heat it and open the pores. mind you the neighbors would be confused as to why I have a garden hose in one hand and a torch in the other and am constantly spraying wood, then making it spit steam from the torch.

since you live in a rural (or maybe just low population) area, I only have to assume that any neighbors that might casually see you already assume you are crazy and that this would not be an issue.

 

[bassbonediva]

I've gotten two of my big pieces of driftwood thoroughly soaked and in the 55gal. They look pretty cool, if I do say so myself. The third is proving a bit trickier since it's an odd shape/size. If I had a torch, I'd try your method, Doom. lol My neighbors are hardly ever around, so they wouldn't know or care what I was doing. In fact, if they were home, they'd probably hang on the fence giving me pointers. Gotta love small towns!

Here's the two pieces in my 55gal (the rock sitting on top of the middle piece is temporary until I figure out a better way to slightly weight that piece down...it's just a little bit boyant still):

 

[lauraf]

Wow, Paige - looks really cool! I'm feeling like I need to add a huge piece of driftwood to my tank now . . . .

 

[bassbonediva]

I never knew what an asthetic different driftwood could make until I added some. I am seriously loving driftwood now! Of course, it'd kinda tough to deal with when you wild-collect it and have to soak it, etc. It's probably easier to buy it from the store or whatever, but I liked being able to just take a hike and find pieces I liked.

 

[exhumed07]

driftwood can look realy good if done right. and as for the small town thing, I'm from one myself, (76 people strong). but my neighbors are used to me doing strang things as well. like hearing a shotgun at 1am or whatnot.

 

[exhumed07]

my driftwood.

 

[default user]

From what I have read, it can take anywhere from a day or two to sometimes even a year for some driftwood to become water logged. It all depends on the wood, how it was harvested, pre-treated, and all those other things. The best thing to do is soak it to get the tannins out, then when you put it in your tank stack a couple of rocks on it to hold it down.

 

[lauraf]

Well, yep, I decided that since my tank has recovered nicely from the CO2 disaster, I would treat us to a makeover. I don't have a huge footprint with all the river rocks and quartz already in my tank that I wanted to keep, plus a couple new plants I've added, but I did find this beautiful piece of wood at my lfs. One end is sunk into the gravel and weighted with a large river rock.