Tea Bags..

[MEAlston]

I posted this on another fish bank...anyhow-
Somewhere in the last few days, someone went into small detail regarding the
addition of tea leaves (bags) contributing some positive aspects to
freshwater tanks. Would that person go into greater detail the principles
and practices of doing such, for me, please. ....Thanx -ED

[swarvegorilla]

Ok in water in the wild tannins are present. These are realeased as plant
matter rots or soaks.
So waters like the 'black waters' some tetra's and rams are from are
strongly coloured. Here in Australia we have tea tree lakes, coloured like
coke.
Anyway many places sell 'blackwater' extract or driftwood that will fill
your water with tannins. The concept of the tea bag is to simulate tannins
released by a rotting leaf bed in a creek. In the dry season flow may slow
to a trickle and tannins concentrate. A sudden downpour may dilute these
tannins and trigger a mass spawn in a wild population.
The story I heard and I have no link to back it up, but anyway old Malaysian
dude. Told me that the asian fish markets cracked breeding the neon tetra
not only by careful selection of breeding fish but also with additions of a
tea (hot or cold I dunno?) made from mullberry leaves.
Anyway maybe they were left over from silkworms or something? Other things
could prob work.
So having already used Indian Almond tea bags for Betta's I decided to try
normal breakfast teas and green teas.
No negatives really and I have had a bit of spawning action. But I am using
at low doses here, 1 teabag to 20L of water. I think it can be helpful if
you use it as part of a simulated wet/dry period.
But yea nothing to concrete to report other than it doesn't kill betta's or
neons.
Hope that helps, there are a lot of other leaves that can be used to make
infusions, barley straw makes slow release hydrogen peroxide, an effective
pond algaecide used well. Also many things are used for fighters, perhaps
the brown dried banana leaf is the easiest to try, if not the most
spectacular of claims.... meant to help regrow fins and make aggression.
:-)


"MEAlston" > wrote in message
...
>I posted this on another fish bank...anyhow-
> Somewhere in the last few days, someone went into small detail regarding
> the
> addition of tea leaves (bags) contributing some positive aspects to
> freshwater tanks. Would that person go into greater detail the principles
> and practices of doing such, for me, please. ....Thanx -ED
>
>

[MEAlston]

Thanks for taking time to expand on this subject. Your comment and
suggestions provide good insight on fish-heads such as me. -ED


--
Pre-scanned via BitDefender Nine

[Marco Schwarz]

Hi..

> Would that person go into greater detail the principles
> and practices of doing such, for me, please.

Well, not that person but..

Chinese and Indian tea for example have several ingredients
but I'm not sure that they have a _general_ benefit to any
fish and (or) plant..

Benefit for example might have tannins (tannic acid) while
caffeine were poison to fish.

I would recommend complete leafs, no broken tea or tea
powder. A tannin-rich sort of tea were Darjeeling Tea. The
best tea I know were a Darjeeling spring tea. Darjeeling is
no dark tea so don't confound "colour" with benefit.

How to prepare tea for 50 litre / 13g:

1: Give 5 teaspoons of that tea leafs in a warm teapot,
2: add 3 cups of boiling water and wait 90 seconds,
3: remove that water, its caffeine were no good for fish,
4: add new hot water and wait 8-10 minutes,
5: fill that tea in a bowl and let it cool down,
6: then remove the tea oil with a sheet of paper from the
surface,
7: use that tea for your tanks.

Why should one take leafs instead of broken tea or tea
powder:

# Caffeine (and pesticides) leave the tea very quickly
through the surface of the leafs while tannin need much
more time to leave it, a good way to separate caffeine and
tannin
# "Injured" (broken or powdered) tea would loose more or
less of its tannin in the same time as its caffeine.

HTH.
--
cu
Marco

[swarvegorilla]

A pleasure.
Cheers for starting the post, I myself snaveled some data from Marco's
reply.
:-)


"MEAlston" > wrote in message
...
> Thanks for taking time to expand on this subject. Your comment and
> suggestions provide good insight on fish-heads such as me. -ED
>
>
> --
> Pre-scanned via BitDefender Nine

[NetMax]

"Marco Schwarz" > wrote in message
...
> Hi..
>
>> Would that person go into greater detail the principles
>> and practices of doing such, for me, please.
>
> Well, not that person but..
>
> Chinese and Indian tea for example have several ingredients
> but I'm not sure that they have a _general_ benefit to any
> fish and (or) plant..
>
> Benefit for example might have tannins (tannic acid) while
> caffeine were poison to fish.
>
> I would recommend complete leafs, no broken tea or tea
> powder. A tannin-rich sort of tea were Darjeeling Tea. The
> best tea I know were a Darjeeling spring tea. Darjeeling is
> no dark tea so don't confound "colour" with benefit.
>
> How to prepare tea for 50 litre / 13g:
>
> 1: Give 5 teaspoons of that tea leafs in a warm teapot,
> 2: add 3 cups of boiling water and wait 90 seconds,
> 3: remove that water, its caffeine were no good for fish,
> 4: add new hot water and wait 8-10 minutes,
> 5: fill that tea in a bowl and let it cool down,
> 6: then remove the tea oil with a sheet of paper from the
> surface,
> 7: use that tea for your tanks.
>
> Why should one take leafs instead of broken tea or tea
> powder:
>
> # Caffeine (and pesticides) leave the tea very quickly
> through the surface of the leafs while tannin need much
> more time to leave it, a good way to separate caffeine and
> tannin
> # "Injured" (broken or powdered) tea would loose more or
> less of its tannin in the same time as its caffeine.
>
> HTH.
> --
> cu
> Marco


A very informative post. Thanks Marco.
--
www.NetMax.tk