Almond Leaves

[bigcheed]

i have a shrimp tank. 28l. i started with 10 baby red cherry shrimp. the females are all in berry and are doing great. a friend of mine gave me a single crystal red from a tank that had crashed. he also has come on leaps and bounds in the two months ive had him. so i went ahead and got 10 more last wed. they have all settled in and are starting to colour up nicely.(they were a bit pale from the shipping when they arrived.) so my tank ph 7.2. and i read that crystal reds like it a little lower so ive got them some almond leaves but im not sure which is the best way to use them.i know they can stain the water with tanins and lower the ph. how drastic will the ph drop be. i don't want to stress them whilst there doing so well. any advice would be welcome. thanks.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

They will stain the water. The can drop the pH but there is no rule of thumb since it depends in the specific tank and leaves. The leaves are not uniform. Using organic means to manipulate pH is a coin toss. You have minimal control.
 
They do not work instantly nor uniformly and then they rot in the tank and have to be changed.
 
If you want to create leaf litter and staining the water etc., that is one thing, changing pH is another. It is not so easy to change your tap parameters in a way that makes it easy to hold them at whatever levels you change them too.
 
It is usually pointless to try changing pH by smaller amounts- say .2 or .5. You will not be able to hold it there.

 

[techen]

I agree with Two tank, With the PH you have I'd learn to deal with it rather than fixing it. Because it costs you more money and more than likely will kill/stress the fish anyway.

 

[bigcheed]

Thanks guys. I think what bothered me was that the new shrimp came from a tank that was ph 6.5. and I was worried on there abilty to adapt. Changing the ph Wasent my only motivation for getting the leaves. I have read they contain many other beneficial properties and that the shrimp would love.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

If what you want is all the good stuff and can accept the staining, there is a better option. Rooibos tea. This isn't actually a tea, but it is used as such. It is a plant unique to S Africa. I use it in wild angel tanks. I brew it and add the resulting tea. You can throw it directly into a tank or put it in the filter.
 

 
The plant has got nothing to do with traditional tea. Traditional tea comes from the plant Camellia sinensis from China which is a plant in the plant family Rosaceae, in other words related to roses. Well Rooibos is made from the plant, Aspalathus linearis, which is a legume belonging to the plant family Fabaceae, in other words related to beans and peas.

I would advise that you read the Wikipedia version of Aspalathus linearis on http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooibos.
 
This is the important part in that for fishkeeping we are interested in the plant phenolic compounds which act as antioxidants, and at the same time that act as antibacterial components.....
 
humic acids are the same as plant phenolics, so this is what everyone has been using already. Oak leaves contain a lot of the plant phenolic called quercetin (derived from the Latin name for the oak tree, Quercus robur) and rooibos also contains some quercetin and the compound aspalathin, which is closely related to quercetin......
 
rooibos has natural stress relieving properties and we all know that altums are exposed to significant stress during transport and during initial adaptation to aquariums

exerpts from a thread where you must be a member to read: http/www.finarama.com/ the author is a professor of Bio-Chemistry and lifelong fish keeper.
 
It is good stuff. I have been using if for about 6 or 7 months and just bought a large amount to share with altum folks and others. It does not lower pH, in fact it might raise it by .10.