What kind of Driftwood?

Question

I'm thinking about getting driftwood for my 55 gal tank. The ph is way too high, (almost 1.0 too high!) and I've heard driftwood is a very good way to lower it. I need to know, what kind of driftwood would be best? What kind will sink? I've seen cypress, among many other kinds on ebay. How big of a piece should I get in order to help the ph?

Also, most of what I've seen online are "all natural" and I'm not sure what I'm going to have to do to it once I get it home. If I boil it, will it kill the tannins that I need to lower my ph, along with the parasites?

Any other info that I should know about driftwood would also be greatly appriciated.
Thank you in advance for your answers.

Answer 1

My first question would be what is too high? an 8. Most fish can survive just fine in many ranges of PH. Peat and bog woods are the best for lowering PH at a slow rate. Your wood will only sink once it is water logged. This will entail soaking it. How large of a piece to control PH is difficult to say since it would depend on the wood. It is better to start with one piece and add on a few weeks later.

Boiling your wood has positive and negative effects. Boiling the wood concentrates the nitrates in the wood.

Drift wood however can be made of anything since driftwood is usually stumps and other woods that have been waterlogged and separated floating. They could be oak, maple, palm, pine there is no way of knowing. Bog woods should be labled bog.

Here ismore about PH and how it works in your tank both fresh and salt:

The property of water to resist changes in pH is known as buffering capacity. You can determine the capacity of your buffering system by measuring total hardness. A reading of 4-6 dH or higher is usually adequate to keep the buffering system in place and maintain a stable pH. A reading under 4 dH means there isn't enough of a buffering system and the pH is likely to drop. For higher pH levels, you will probably want to aim for 6-12 dH. Many hobbyists choose to measure only Carbonate Hardness (KH), which is a measure of the calcium carbonates in your water. This test is also effective in maintaining a proper buffer system. When testing for Carbonate Hardness, a reading of 75-100 mg/L is adequate for most aquariums, while a reading of 100-200 mg/L would be desired for higher pH levels. For the purpose of freshwater aquariums, measuring either total hardness or carbonate hardness is necessary, but measuring both independently would not be needed.

You need to know that anywhere in your aquarium where detritus (a fancy term for dirt) accumulates is a source of Phosphate production. As detritus accumulates in your gravel bed and on your filter pads, the Phosphate levels in your aquarium rise. Free Phosphate ions may bond with calcareous buffering material, precipitating calcium from your aquarium, and reducing your aquariums ability to keep pH stable. This is why it is so very important to clean your filter pads regularly and vacuum the aquarium gravel with each water change. In addition, your tap water contains buffering ions. Doing regular partial water changes will help to replenish the buffers which have been lost. This is important in all aquariums, because fish respiration and organic wastes alone will cause a gradual drop in the ability of your aquarium to buffer against pH swings.

Now the question becomes what to do if the fish you want to keep have very special pH requirements. If your fish prefer a pH level which is reasonably close to the pH your aquarium water is naturally buffered to, then I do not recommend you make any changes at all. Unless you are keeping an extremely specialized fish your fish will be fine. On the other hand, if your fish have pH requirements which are far from the values in your tank, then you have work to do.

Let us consider methods of raising the pH of your tap water. There are many additives on the market today which claim to raise your pH. Most of the liquid products on the market today are a 50/50 success at best when used alone only to find the ph will soon return to the normal level of 6. You also need to use a product to increase the buffering ability of your aquarium. To maintain a stable pH in the upper levels of the pH scale for fishkeeping, I would recommend using a buffering substrate such as crushed coral. You can add crushed coral to your existing aquarium. You can place larger amounts of shells or chrushed coral beneath the substraight in the tank. I personally place the crushed coral in a mesh bag and place the bag in my filter. You will want about 1 kg of crushed coral per 40 liters of water to buffer the water to hold a pH around 7.6. This method does not allow for the use of large quantities of crushed coral, but can be effective if you only need to make small adjustments to your aquariums buffering ability. This is why ocean items such as shells and ocean sand should not be used in a fresh water aquarium. It does raise the PH level.

Be assured that attempting to control pH is the most frustrating experience for a fish hobbyist. I would guess that 50% of the problems encountered in new aquariums are a result of the aquarist attempting to change the pH level. Few fish keepers actually need to adjust their pH. For the majority of aquarists your tap water pH will be adequate. The dangers of adjusting the pH incorrectly far outweigh any benefit you may receive by moving your pH a few points on the scale.

Remember, when it comes to adjusting your pH, less is more! Stability is most important. Routine maintenance is the key to keeping your pH stable and your fish healthy!

Also, do not use baking soda in your tank. Over doing the ph plus adding additional salt is not going to do your tank any good. It will also revert back to 6 when the carbon filters pull the Soda out.
Hope this helps

Answer 2

1. Fish are very tolerant of a wide PH range - all but the most delicate of fish will be able to handle a ph 1.0 too high. So don't worry too much.

2. Softer driftwood will have more of an impact on the water. Either way you'd better get a good amount of it to see any real results.

3. Tanins and the woods softening effect are seperate entities - the wood will continue to affect the water long after the tanins have stopped leeching. Don't worry about tainins, they're harmless and will fade over time - some woods take days, others take months or even years.

4. The woods affect on the water depends on your PH - the higher the PH in the first place, the less affect wood will have. If your PH is over 8, you can expect driftwood to have a very small, if any, affect on your water.

5. Any driftwood will sink, but some are very soft and overly dried out and will take a few days of soaking before it becomes waterlogged enough.

6. If you buy driftwood from the fish shop or other supplier you can just rinse it and place it in the tank. Rinsing it or boiling it for tanin reasons is optional. If the wood is something you are collecting from outdoors then you'll want to boil it first. Keep in mind boiling can quickly break down softer woods, so be careful.

Answer 3

I've bought driftwood for my 55 gallon on ebay before, and it's fine in my tank. Some of them are labeled as "aquarium safe", and "treated without chemicals" which usually means it's been boiled, which is a good way to get it ready for your aquarium. When it arrives, you should soak it in water for several days. Replace the water daily untill the water is no longer tinted "yellow". i didn't soak mine for quite that long, and the tnak water turned a little yellow, but I did a partial water change to fix that. For some fish, the "black water" as they call it is actually good for them.

As far as Ph goes, what kind of fish are you keeping? Unless you're keeping exotic or very difficult fish (such as discus or some types of cichlids), pH shouldn't be a huge concern. What stresses the fish most is fluctuations in pH, not the actual pH level itself. As long as the level isn't outrageous (and NOT fluctuating), your fish should be fine. My pH is around 8, which is 1 over what it should be (7 I guess). Even with the driftwood it's that high, and I have several pieces in there now. I haven't lost a fish in.. about a year. I have dojo loaches, yoyo loaches, platys, several types of danios, gold barbs, a betta, and corydoras, and all of them are fine and healthy.

Now back to the driftwood. Considering that the pH isn't incredibly important (unless you have extremely sensitive fish such as discus), the size of the piece is more of a personal preference than anything.

You can treat wood you find yourself, but this is a pretty... well it's labor intensive. There are some beautiful pieces on ebay, and as long as they have been boiled and say aquarium safe or not treated with chemicals, they should be fine. look for a reputable dealer with good feedback (as always) or one who specifically sells wood for aquariums. In case you do decide to go the route of self-treating your driftwood, here's a good article about it:
http://www.aquariumadvice.com/article_view.php?faq=2&fldAuto=34

Something to consider if you do decide to use driftwood for its pH lowering properties, keep in mind that it may not work at all. Your water (especially if it is "hard" water) may not respond to the pH lowering properties. This is because there are so many buffers in the water (buffers keep the pH "stable" helping to prevent fluctuations, and your attempts at lowering it). Because of this, no one can say for sure how much driftwood you will need in your tank if you wish to lower the pH with the wood. Here's an article about the relationship between pH, kH and gH (basically pH and water hardness) that will explain all that: http://www.drhelm.com/aquarium/chemistry.html
One final thing, if you soak your driftwood, soak it in treated water (with water conditioner) so chemicals don't soak into the driftwood.