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Yah, my large mopani leached like crazy for 4 months (soaked in a bucket that got dumped and refilled every morning), by month 5 it had quit leaching enough not to affect my tank with regular water changes.Whatever you decide on, DO YOUR RESEARCH.
Driftwood can take months to get it to do what you envision. I wanted to set up my fish tank for my son's 4th birthday (He gets a pet fish, I get a cool planted tank haha). I found the most incredible piece of Mopani driftwood, all gnarled with crevices, holes and so much detail. I paid $70 for it at the LFS. Brought it home, got all my equipment to set up my tank. Then I read online how to prep Mopani driftwood for a tank, turns out it leaches tannins into the water and turns the water brown (some prefer this aesthetic, gives it a natural look. I however, do not.) So I soaked the wood for a week, boiled it literally all day on my day off. Two weeks went by and no progress. Then after reading multiple posts online, some people said they had Mopani wood that leached tannins for literally YEARS before it stopped.
I decided to scrap the Mopani wood and get Spider wood (I use the Mopani wood for decoration in a hallway now).
This new piece of Spider wood is massive. I've been soaking it for a week now and it just WILL NOT sink. So I ordered slate and stainless steel screws online, I'm currently waiting for them to arrive so I can drill holes in the slate and anchor it to the Spider Wood.
TL;DR - It's taken me 3 months to get a tank set up because my driftwood isn't doing what I want it to do.
Hi @Ryan MosbyDoes anyone know where I can get pieces of driftwood like the two pieces from this tank?
View attachment 1025896
The description says the wood is Redmoor but I haven't been able to find any pieces of any wood quite like this, where it's large and reaches across with multiple branches.
Thank you! I'll check out if my LFS has some lava rock, I like the idea of plants rooting to it.There are a lot of tutorials on YouTube, but many involve using rock (lava rock is light and cheap, and once covered plants stick to it really well) and either reef cement or pond foam to attach them into a structure. If it is very tall and narrow front to back, you will either want to silicone it to the tank or cement it to a flat slate base so it won't tip. You can also anchor the wood to the rock structure so it won't shift later, and this also allows you to create gravity-defying layers of wood to give that forced perspective depth.