Driftwood made my tank dark orange - how do I fix this?

[CammieTime]

I put some driftwood I bought at my LFS into my tank (I rinsed it first) and now the water is all dark orange. I did a water change, but the next day it orange again.

How do I get this orange color out of my water?

[Eddie]

Take it out and boil the wood first, let it soak in dechlorinated water for a week or so on its own. This will help get all the tannins (causing the orange) out. If you just want the orange out, I believe you can use activated carbon in your filters to get it out but the wood will still leak tannins and you don't want to continuously use the activated carbon.

HTH
Eddie

[CraigG]

It will clear up eventually took 2 months for mine. Even with boiling it.

[Graham]

add some carbon and maintain the WC's

G

[bansart]

add some carbon and maintain the WC's

G

I agree WCs would do the trick. tannins from driftwood never completely disappears.. even when boiled slight tannins still seep from the wood but boiling it would definetley remove most. regular WCs will do the trick :)

[CammieTime]

Does the tannis hurt the fish, particulary the dicus?

[thebigone]

I soaked my dark driftwood in a bucket for about a week changing the water every other day and put it in my tank and it barly turned the water dark.

Thanks,
Josh

[1077]

Tannins are not harmful to your fish. boiling the wood removes most of the tannins as mentioned here but DO NOT leave anything boiling unattended.

[kenhappen2u]

Does the tannis hurt the fish, particulary the dicus?

the tannis is actually good for your fish .. some people even like the look of the tinted water , but if you dont want to wait weeks for it to clear up then your wither gonna have to take it out of the tank and soak it in some buckets of water for a week or so changing the water dailly , OR you can boil it on top of your stove in a large enough pot , changing the water between boils , you will need to boil it a couple of 2-3 times with clean fresh water each time . this will shorten the time it will leak tannis into your tank .

ken

[White Worm]

You'll be fine. It may take a couple months, but it will eventually stop.

[ekurutz]

I had the same problem, and here is what I did to solve it quickly. Take the wood out and as most of the other posters prior to myself have said you need to boil it. The quickest way I found was to boil about 3 or 4 pots of water (depending on the size of the wood) and dump them all into a large cooler and submerge the driftwood. Leave the lid close and leave it in there overnight. I only had to repeat this about 3 times before the water in my fish tank was no longer noticeably tinted.

[Roxanne]

Hi all

My driftwood has finally stopped leaching after a couple of months, but I noticed when I put a peice back after having it out of the tank for a couple of weeks, there was a weird white slime on the wood so I pulled that peice out of the tank...And the other driftwood gets fine hairy type growth on it..there's no algae in the tanks & they're not near windows...anyone know what that's all about?

Cheers from Roxanne, the brain sucker....

[dpt8]

I agree with Ken. It softens the water and adds elements that the disucs, especially wilds like. To me their colors always look brighter too when the tannins of the driftwood seep into th water. I like !!!! DavidT