I have a large piece of driftwood in one of my tanks. Its the first time i've ever attempted using a wood basking spot. I normally favor more easily cleaned basking areas. The turtles in the tank just love it and they can easily adjust their distance from the basking light. My problem arises in the driftwood discoloring the water. Less than a week after changing the water, my 75 gallon tank looks like its filled with tea. I dont know if this is a health concern for the turtles, but its certainly not very attractive. I scrub the wood every time i clean the tank, but i haven't used any soaps or sanitizers on it because i was concerned it would absorb into the wood and potentially hurt the turtles. If anyone can offer any suggestions as to how to keep the wood from staining the water and how to properly sanitize it, i would be very grateful. Thanks in advance!
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driftwood discoloring water
Replies (1)
There is nothing you can do. In theory you can boil the driftwood and that will leach most of the tannic acids from it but in reality nothing you can do except time.
In time it wont leach any more tannic acids but that could be months or more. My big piece of driftwood in my musk turtle tank took 6 months even with boiling to stop leaching tannic acid however it leached a bit less every month.
The wood has to go through its course to rid itself of it NOTHING can remove it from the wood. Maybe boiling might slightly hurry it up I dont think it did for me but glad now that I did keep the wood.
