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How do I stop driftwood from leaching tanins?


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Depending on the wood it will leech tannins for awhile. You could probably boil and soak for days and still have tannins. 

On the one hand tannins aren't necessarily harmful, but the best way I know of to polish the water that's browned because of tannins is using a purigen pouch in your filter. It'll soak up the tannins and then you can actually recharge the Purigen pouch. After a few days of Purigen use the tea color should subside.

As I mentioned before though, tannins can be beneficial for certain types of fish. 

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You just have to have patience and wait-- the wood will stop eventually. Until then purigen helps, but water changes are the real solution in my opinion. You can overwhelm purigen in a few days, and there was not enough purigen space in my canister filter to keep up so I gave up and waited it out. Took a couple months. 

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27 minutes ago, Brandy said:

You just have to have patience and wait-- the wood will stop eventually. Until then purigen helps, but water changes are the real solution in my opinion. You can overwhelm purigen in a few days, and there was not enough purigen space in my canister filter to keep up so I gave up and waited it out. Took a couple months. 

Yeah this is a great point about Purigen. You have to kinda be committed to changing and replacing it for it to work and it can take a lot of polishing and replacing Purigen bags to get the desired result. 

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The best thing you can do when you get new driftwood and you don't desire the tea colored look in your tank is to place it first in a tub and let it leach out tannin there over a few weeks, or in some cases even months, changing the water in the tub every few days. I don't boil my wood because in over fifty years of doing this I've learnt that boiling damages at the very least the surface structure of the wood and it will rot sooner than it normally would that way. If I'm worried about bugs, or creepy crawlies in it then I soak it for a while in a mix of water (H2O) and hydrogen peroxide (H3O) which kills the bugs and in the process turns itself into water. Following this treatment for about 48 hours I rinse it off let it dry in the sun, and then soak it again for a while, if it is still leaching tannin it goes back in the water tub until it stops. However, I've also used some wood almost immediately after the initial H3O treatment, rinse, and dry when I was setting up a blackwater tank for discus and angelfish where I desired the tea color.

Placing the wood right away into the tank will you give you instant gratification but if you don't want tea colored water then it definitely won't give you satisfaction because tannin can continue to leach for a very long time depending on the type of wood, Mopani for example can visibly leach up to three months sometimes. Purigen works, but as @Brandysaid, it can get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of tannin leaching out, and going that route can turn into a very costly endeavor if you keep exchanging one, or two bags of Purigen either every week, or multiple times per week. The tub method  is cheaper, it takes space for the tub, takes a while, it does require the frequent water changes, but in the end you will notice when the color is acceptable to you and if it is almost there you can then still get Purigen to get that very last bit of it and it won't break the bank. Another benefit of the tub soak is you will know when the wood stops floating if it did so to begin with.

In my community tank I wanted blackwater without the tannin color effect, so I soaked the wood, some pieces up to three months, when I saw no more leaching I set up the tank. To get the blackwater benefit to my fish and plants without the extreme coloring I use Brightwell Aquatics Blackwater Plant  and Shrimp which doesn't create the extreme tea color effect.

PS: You can recharge Purigen in the way Seachem describes with bleach, but in my experience it doesn't do as well after and I'm careful with anything bleach and it would have to be thoroughly soaked and rinsed before I trust it.

Edited by Jungle Fan
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When I came back to the hobby, I was wary about tannins, and put in a lot of effort to remove them. I used Purigen, recharged with bleach, and had some negative side-effects because of my own mistakes.

Then, like the idea of not chasing pH, I embraced tannins and grew to love them and their benefits, especially with hard water. I have one piece of wood that is thirty years old and still releases tannins because my inhabitants still enjoy grazing it, and breaking it down.

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2 minutes ago, Streetwise said:

I have one piece of wood that is thirty years old and still releases tannins because my inhabitants still enjoy grazing it, and breaking it down.

Do you remember what type of wood it is? I think it would be amazing to have a piece of driftwood for 30 years.

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Hello,

I'd love to add some drift wood to my 40-gallon fresh water community tank so have been reading this forum.

I live in the woods so can I just use any interesting looking piece of wood after soaking it in water and hydrogen peroxide? I'm pretty sure I will avoid black walnut because they are super high in tannins and many plants will not grow near these trees due to that...

Any suggestions are welcome! Thank you! Think SPRING!!!

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