Mopani Driftwood

[bbrown]

I have a medium sized piece of mopani driftwood in my 35 g tank. I soaked the wood (which would not sink) for a week prior to putting it in the tank. I changed the water every day. A week after putting it in the tank I noticed some white mold-like substances forming on it. It is easily removed however wanted to know if it was harmful to the water or the tank. I assume it's not a form of algae since the tank is new and the substance is white. Thanks in advance,

 

[SittingDuck]

Ya, I have no idea what this is, but I had the same thing on two pieces of driftwood that I put in my tank. One piece of driftwood was in an established tank for....4 to 5 years, but then sat outside of water for 2 years.

After rubbing it off with my fingers and scooping up all the big pieces with a net the stuff stopped appearing after about 1 week.

I too would like to know if the stuff is toxic...

 

[vero]

I'm quite interested in knowing the answer to your question....

I bought a piece of Mopani wood. It's been soaking in water for the last two weeks (in a bucket, not in the aquarium). I'm trying to soak it for as long as it will "leak" tannins because I found that these change a lot the pH (it lowers it by 0.8!). It hasn't grown any white stuff...

This article suggests how to treat your wood before using it in your tank:

http://www.aquariumadvice.com/showquestion.php?faq=2&fldAuto=34

My suggestion to you would be to get the piece out of the tank and boil it for a while, or soak it some more with salty water as suggested in the article. That might kill whatever is growing.

 

[Liggs17]

In my only experience with driftwood I had to boil the hell out of the sucker, as it kept leaking tannins. When I was finally tired of boiling (after an hour and a half), I dumped a load of carbon in with the driftwood and let it sit for a few days.

Liggs

 

[Toirtis]

Just guck...non-toxic, but ugly and irritating....I find that a good scrubbing under a stream of very hot tap water tends to prevent it.

 

[TankGirl]

I have found the white stuff will go away once the piece of wood gets loaded up with a biofilm, but it is not harmful at any rate, just a little unsightly.

 

[bbrown]

Thanks so much. It has in fact gone away now.

 

[RoK]

I get some of it for the first week or so when putting driftwood in my tanks. It goes away, although I think my plecos actually ate it.