Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Boiling Driftwood and a New Betta

I bought a piece of driftwood from a seller on eBay for my Angelfish tank and it arrived yesterday.  It soaked in hot water all of yesterday with multiple water changes every time it got cold.  It is leaching a lot of tannin, so I've decided to go ahead and boil for several hours this morning.  My previous driftwood pieces (one Malaysian from LFS and one African root from a different eBay seller) discolored water, but nowhere near the extent of this new Mopani piece.  ^^;  I know some people soak the wood for weeks and months, but I do want a little bit of that tea color for the tank water, so I will not soak this for weeks on end.  But I don't want my aruarium water to be so dark that I'd have to be changing water all the time, either.  ^^;


Driftwood in water.  This is after the first boiling resulted in coffee colored water - couldn't see the bottom of the pot.  This was taken at the beginning of the second round of boiling. ^^;


In 45 minutes, the water was this color. You can see the reflection of the hanging plant on the water surface. XD  I boiled it until it got even darker and I couldn't see the wood at all.

It's going through the third session of boiling as I write this.  I'm hoping that it will start to slow down...  Nope.  Just checked the pot and the water is just as dark again. XD  That's a total of 4 hours of boiling so far.  I guess I'll continue some more during the afternoon.

I've bought some more of the African roots from the same seller I bought the piece that's in my 72-gallon tank to compliment that piece.  His pieces are pre-soaked and scrubbed, so they don't leach nowhere near as much as this Mopani in the pictures today.

We have a new resident in our Marimo nursery tank.  Meet our new baby, Cordelia!


She looks really bright in this picture.  The red in her fins are a little darker in real life and her light body is more peach colored.  Very pretty!  And she has electric blue eyes.  She was at the LFS in a partitioned tank.  This 6-gallon is planted with Java Moss, Marimo, Cabomba (pulled from my 29-gallon tank where it was scattered by boisterous Emperor Tetras), Wisteria, and some floating Amazon Frog Bits.  She's pretty small, but surprisingly 'interactive'. :D  I hope to get a better picture to post soon.