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ARG!!! i am frusterated with the "yellow" look. I soaked the driftwood i slected for my 29 gallon tank in water for a week, changing the water in the bucket it was soaking in once a day. yellow and nasty...finally i stick it in the tank...for the last couple months my 29 gallon has been set up the water has been YELLOW....I use RO water, it tests fine, ph stays at 7.0....it was chrystal clear before the driftwood, not since...how long does it take it to leech out that stuff??? i do 30% water changes once a week....i mean, good grief....

i am running dual over the back aquaclear 50s with my own filter sponge material under their supplied sponge, with their charcoal packs, and then in little plastice cages i fabbed up they both house more charcoal and ammonia absorbing resin rocks. i take over filtration a lil over board, the carbon gets changed once every week or two depending on water quality, they arent left in for more than two weeks on their supplied carbon inserts and the resin is changed weekly.

i also am running a air stone as well...i would have though the carbon would remove the tannins yellow color, but no go so far. any filter inserts anyone knows of? if not how long will i have this lovely tannin pee yellow in my tank?

Tannic acids will stick around for a very long time...some people (and fish) actually like the effect.

That being said....increasing water changes and making sure you use a good carbon will help.
A diatom filter if you have the money will clear it up really quickly.

^_^


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Instead of using all that carbon I would suggest seachem's purigen. Rechargeable and a tiny little filter bag of the stuff is enough for a 100g. I actually have 2 filter bags in the cannister on the 90g just because the water could bypass 1 so easily and then I don't have to worry about it getting used up any time soon. However unless you buy it already in the bag it would take a bag with a very high micron rating to keep the particles in.

For comparison on my 55g I was keeping 2 penguin 330 filters(2 media baskets each) filled with carbon plus changing the 4 filtration cartridges with carbon in them every other week and my tank was still stained from 3 small-medium pieces of wood. Before I did that I couldn't even see in my tank. Most wood will eventually swell up and seal off the rest of the tannic acid but some won't and my clown plecs were scraping the outside layers off so it just kept releasing more tannins. 2 bags of purigen and there is not the tiniest hint of yellow. I recharge them every few months. I threw a heck of alot of carbon out on the garden until I bought purigen.
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Also you might want to test your tank ph and kh. If your using water with a starting ph of 7.0 then your kh is probably around 3 degrees meaning a fair amount of tannic acid could really affect it. Peat and driftwood can potentially drop the ph down to 5.0 if the starting water is soft. Carbon removes color but the ph will still drop. I buffer my ro water back up to 5dkh which gives it a ph of around 7.4 just to be safe.

I think that water changes are your best bet with tannins.



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well, the RO water i get(sometimes i have to get filtered drinking water and add conditioners to it when in a bind, i dont like doing it cause its still a little hard,but the ph is about the same,7.5) is at 7.3 ph when i get it, and i buff it to keep the tank at 7.0.

i might try the filtration you suggested, i wanna see if i can get it at any LFS's.

If your RO water has a pH of 7.3, then it isn't really RO water. It's supposed to have a pH of 7.0.

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Not knowing exactly the species of wood you used is difficult to give a correct answer, and I am not up to the wood species like iused to be when I was teaching the trade especially non Aust timbers

Depending on the wood some will give off tannins as long as they are in a tank this is usually as it breaks down. Other timbers release very little tannins at all.

I would remove it sunbleach it then resoak it for at least a month changing the water weekly. Also giving it a stiff brushing before you put it back into clean water.

After all this and it still releases too much tannins replace it completly.

Keith

Last edited by keithgh at 14-Jan-2006 18:51

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thanks, im not sure what type of wood, i just know its driftwood not bogwood.it is either,lol...i had done everything you mentioned other than soaking it for months and giving it a stiff brushing.

either way, my pleco munching on it all the time prolly doesnt help,lol. i am going to look around at different types of driftwood in the hopes i can find something that releases less tannins, i had no luck on finding a filter addition as was mentioned by an above poster, and it would be nice to have a taller piece to add height to the tank and give the tetras some cover. so, what are some common woods found in US fish stores that will work in a freshwater tank.

p.s. i think my ph test kit is off slightly. the buffer i use for my tank actually is supposed to be a light PH buffer and set it to 6.8...i dont use the full dosage to prevent it from dropping the ph too low, but with the buffer in there and the tank reading at 7.0 and the RO water showing 7.3, makes me wonder if my test kit i have is off. i bought another one today to see...the test kit i was using wasnt that old, but it was a fairly cheap test kit. i will test with the new kit tomarrow