Can driftwood affect PH

[chris]

Can driftwood affect PH :?:

[Fishpimpin73]

Sure thing.

Tannins that are released from driftwood can alter your ph.

How much this shift effects your tank is directly linked to the amount of driftwood in it.

Some dritftwoods have higher levels of tannins than others.

If you have just a few small peices of DW in your tank, you really should not see much of a shift, unless your water quality were exceedingly poor, then the build up of tannins could create a noticeable shift in PH ( but is not that likely. Your water would have to have been sitting for MONTHS for the tannins to build up like that).
Now if you have 25 to 30 pounds of DW in your tank like I do in my 55g planted eyesore, then the tannins will darken the water and soften it slightly.

Now if you have LOTS of DW, then you could have a deff shift in PH over a period of time ( between water changes for example ) but it should not be a HUGE change.

Many Dwarf Cichlid and Apisto keepers are fond of DW as it helps to keep things a little on the acidic side.

I have also known many discus keepers to use ENORMOUS amounts of DW to help keep the PH buffered in their display tanks.

Something that you can do to remove a major amount of tannins from DW before adding it to your aquarium is BOIL THE HECK OUT OF IT.
This helps to remove most of the worst of the tannins and also is a first line of defense for your fish.
You never know what kind of critters are living on the fiber of the wood that you are going to be placing into your aquarium.

HTH

[chris]

I have an old bit of driftwood that im going to use my new breeding tank, would I expecting my PH to drop thats what im hoping for and also to help them fell more comfortable. :wink:

[TomSharland]

Tannins from driftwood will only drop the pH of the water if your buffer capacity (kH or carbonate hardness) is low. This is due to the tannins being acidic. kH is the degree of concentration or ammount of CO3- ions in the water, and these act as a buffer by mopping up and excess acid ions (H+) preventing a drop in pH. Without water changes, the number of CO3- ions will be used up as the drift wood releases the tannins. When this happenes, any further release of tannins will cause a crash in pH as the ability to stabalise the acid is lost. This is most apparent in smaller aquariums due to the added effect of a breakdown of food due to decomposition, which also releases acidic compounds.

With regular water changes, the drop in pH is minimised due to the concentration of CO3- ions being kept at a reasonable level (if you have any level of CO3- ions)

If you have a high kH, then the ability for drift wood to help drop the pH is very low especially if you do regular water changes.

Another way to drop the pH, but again, high kH will prevent the full effect, is to add granulated peat in to a filter, as this will release tannins more readily in to the aquarium.

If you do have a high kH then there are 2 main ways to drop pH, both by removing or lowering the kH.

1) Add an appropriate buffer, say a pH6.5 buffer (adding chemicals to the system)

or

2) Use a reverse osmosis unit to remove all (well, most of ~99%) the dissolved ions and particulates from the water. Although this will remove all the kH from the water and give the chance of the pH crashes mentioned earlier. Also, and minerals needed by the fish will be removed, so some people put these back in.

I hope that clears thing up a little :D

Regards

Tom

[Proteus]

Thanks Tom, and welcome to DF.com

You have hit on one of the points which I am sure most people dont understand, KH is the key to a successful PH.

Get your KH right, and you should have a stable PH.

I have close to 40kg (80 pounds approx) of DW in my 5ft Display tank, along with the local water it stays in an acidic range of 6.60 to 6.85 (also controlled by routine water changes).

lately the local water has lost most of its natural KH & GH, so I will be gradualy adding a few pieces of Coral Bone to my sump filter to naturally buffer things back a bit.

On a related topic, you quite often see in the stores products such as Blackwater extracts etc, I would personlly prefer a piece of DW to do the same job that these additives do. In a Sth American biotope tank, DW is your friend.