mopani wood

hi all,
just wanted to get some info on mopani wood. Thinking of getting a few pieces to add to my breeding tank to help lower ph and soften water? Anyone use this and what is the best way to add to tank - add straight to tank without soaking first to get most out of it or should it be soaked first? just thought this might help breeding peppermints
let me know what you all think!
Cheers

always soak wood before it goes into the tank. to clean it if nothing else. I always boil my wood before it goes into a tank, or if it is too big to boil, soak it in a tub with as hot as possible water and a heavy salt solution.

Just to be on thje safe side. the mopani wood is great, i managed to score some off a mate and it looks amazing

Try to get your hands on old "clean" esky( most wood will fit in these), boil( or bloody hot water as not warp your esky)
and soak for a few days and repeat this process for 2 weeks as to not remove the good stuff your actually wanting.
The boiling is the way to clean your wood of nasties- salt will leave some sort of residue ( or then you need to rinse the hell out of the wood- removing more good stuff)
A wire wheel is great for removing excess or loose wood( dirt and sawdust) but mopani is usually pretty neat.

J

ok great thanks for the replies guys i will definitely give it a good clean before adding to my tank. i know mopani wood will soften water but does it actually lower ph too? i'm having trouble keeping my ph down with adelaide's water. i use seachem neutral regulator to try to bring it down to neutral a bit but seems to always bounce back up to 7.6 (over a fortnight or so). i was told from my LFS to use seachems discus buffer with neutral regulator to get the ph i wanted. of course i will try it very slowly, but if this mopani wood might lower it a little naturally i might just use that.
what do you guys think?
cheers

peppermint23 wrote:

i was told from my LFS to use seachems discus buffer with neutral regulator to get the ph i wanted. of course i will try it very slowly
cheers

NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooo! Dont do it!!! lean from my mistakes and dont do it! you will drop your pH no worries but you will have phosphate concentrations that break even the proper scientific equipment!! The device here at uni stops after 80ppm and just reads error, and all my tanks were 'error'. my water went cloudy, my fish got sick, i got stressed, they stopped breeding, i got double stressed and in the end they started to die, and i cried.

Moral of the story, dont use phosphate based buffers! I havent had much luck in finding a replacement so I went with an RO filter. I know there are products out there that are HCL based so they might be an option.

oh wow thanks for the heads up doug! any suggestions where to get a relatively cheap ro filter for a 3 foot tank? i've never seen them in fish stores before.
just out of interest could you just use a product to lower or remove phosphate? but that would probably defeat the purpose of using a buffer in the first place hey.
hmm i don't have a phosphate test kit, but now i should probably get one.

yeah, using the phospahte remover destroys the point of adding it in in the first place.

An RO filter doesnt go on a tank, it filters the water you use for water changes.

check ebay, although be cautious of the really cheep ones.

oh i see...hmm might have to look if i can get a hold of any HCl buffers then. any idea what API pH down and proper pH are made of? i've tried to look on the net but can't seem to find if it is phosphate or not. the only other option is to not mess with ph at all and see if they'll breed in adelaide's 7.6 ph water? have you had much possitive feedback with bn breeding in 7.6 ph? i'm going to get my water tested today for phosphate levels and make sure it's not too high.

i found this:

"Seachem Acid Buffer™ is a non-phosphate buffer to lower pH and buffer with Alkaline Buffer™. Both buffers are designed for the planted aquarium or for very hard water where phosphate buffers may pose an algae or cloudiness problem. Acid Buffer™ lowers pH and buffers between 5.0 and 8.0 when used with Alkaline Buffer™. As Acid Buffer™ lowers pH it converts carbonate alkalinity (KH) into available CO2."

from the seachem website. what do you think?

looks the goods to me. I have never used it but it sounds like just the ticket.

give it a shot.

in terms of breeding in adelaide tap water, in my experence it is possible for commons (never had any luck with peps or OS) but the fry mortailty is high and the spawn rate is lower. That said, when i was using phospahte buffers they slowed down even more. dont think they liked the fluctuating water conditions. My advice would be to make up the water for the changes the night before and bubble it like mad so that its chemisty is stable when you go to add it into the tank. I think that was one of my biggest problems.

ok thanks heaps for the help! when you say bubble it over night i'm guessing you mean with airstones? what if my tank already has lots of airstones constantly on? or would it still fluctuate a bit before reaching a stable level?

the water will adjust in the tank, but that will mean a variation in the water paramters. this is what you are trying to avoid. by bubbling the water over night you will make the water settle down and force the CO2 out of the water. that means when you test the water parameters they will be right.

ok thanks doug
tested my phosphate level today and bam! sure enough it was way off the chart. the API test kit goes to 10 and my colour was at least double as dark (almost black). so i have added some poly-filter in my filter to remove phosphate and i also got some API pH down which is phosphate free (it's sulfuric acid). over the next two weeks or more i will slowly bring the pH down about 0.2 every 4 days or so. sound ok? or can i change it faster than that?

you can change it faster than that but i wouldnt. I have done emergency pH swings at 0.2 per day and they fish seemed ok, bit stressed. Doing it your way would be much better

that's good to know!
thanks for all your help this has been another learning curve for me

Great work guys on the advice given....