Malaysian driftwood

[sattva]

I bought a piece of Malaysian driftwood on a whim and it arrived today... They recommend soaking it, to leach the tannic acid from it for fish tanks... I soaked it and it hardly turned the water color... I got to thinking with all the woods out there that are poison to snakes maybe I better ask you guys... I hate to kill a snake with a stupid mistake!

[trailblazer295]

The tanins in the wood that turns aquarium water brown is what it's referring to. In terms of whether or not it's dangerous to reptiles I don't know. The soaking tries to get that out before turning your water a light brown. It isn't dangerous to the fish just isn't desired by keepers so the idea is to boil it first so it doesn't cloud the water. Driftwood lowers the pH in aquariums which depending on the fish is good but not good for others like cichlids that require higher pH.

[dannybgoode]

The tannins can take *ages* to leach out as well. Months sometimes. They're great for dark water tanks and fish like Bettas love it!

As TB says they're not so good for other fish depending on your tap water pH as they cash play havoc with the numbers.

[toddnbecka]

Malaysian wood is very dense, and will sink w/out soaking (unlike most dry pieces of wood) and lasts for many, many years whereas other woods will decay and/or gradually "dissolve" in an aquarium. The tannins do take quite a long time to soak out, here's a couple pics from when I first set up my 125 gallon tank. First pic is a 90 gallon tank I used to soak several large chunks of wood, second is a 5 gallon bucket of the water after several days. The tannins won't leach out unless the wood is submerged, and are harmless to fish, and certainly reptiles as well.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v628/toddnbecka/001.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/toddnbecka/media/001.jpg.html)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v628/toddnbecka/013.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/toddnbecka/media/013.jpg.html)

It was a couple months for the majority of the water-staining effect to stop, and probably a year or more before the water stayed clear between partial changes.