Should you boil Malyasian driftwood?

Boiling won't hurt the wood just remove extra tannins fast and it will sterilize it. Boil it for 30 half hour the replace the water with clean and do it again the water will be very brown. You could repeat until the water stops turning brown but it's not needed if you are ok with tinted aquarium water.

Boiling the wood for 5 minutes. Draining the water. Then boiling again for 5 minutes seemed very effective for getting the tannins out.

Thanks

I didn't boil my Malaysian but I wanted the blackwater effect. Now that I realize it lowers my light tremendously, I wish I had. At school I boiled oak branches for almost 3 hours (changing water included to make sure everything was dead in the branch and all the stuff was gone. It worked very well

all of the above is correct.... i boil my smaller pieces for about 8 hours, depending on the type of wood, for larger pieces that you cant boil, i still use boiling water mixed with hot water in the tub, and drain, repeat for about a week, or until water is crystal clear and stays that way for a day... you can also use purigen, this will make a tremendous effect on clearing your water and fast!

+1 on the purigen. Used it today and yesterday to clear my water. Works miracles, though it got used quicker than I anticipated.

Using Commercial Driftwood Pieces

duganderson said:

Today I bought a nice piece of Malaysian driftwood from my local fish store for my 8 gallon cube. The directions on the tag said to soak it in water until the water was clear OR to boil it.

Would boiling it damage the wood or make it more apt to break or fall apart?

How long should I boil it for if I do?

Thanks, Doug

Click to expand...

Hello d...

If you don't want to monitor the stove while you're boiling something, then if possible, put the piece in the dishwasher and run it (without the soap). The water temp in my dishwasher gets up to 180 degrees, more than hot enough to clean and flush most of the color that might leach into your tank water.

Depending on the piece, you may have a little amber color to the tank water, but a couple of large water changes will clear it up. Besides, you should be changing out half the tank water weekly anyway, right?

B