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Mr. Gardener · February 9th 06, 05:48 PM posted to rec.aquaria.freshwater.misc

On Thu, 9 Feb 2006 16:25:47 +0000 (UTC), (Richard
Sexton) wrote:

Mr Gardener, trying something new in his tanks.
(My monthly visit to the city has been to the tobacco store, where I
can provision my pipe tobacco needs for half the price it costs here
in this little coastal village. Now I get to add a pet store visit to
the agenda.)

I'm not familiar enough with the products (and I've only toyed with
black-water extracts many years ago), but with limited experience, I've
gotten good results with dried leaves. Seems to be a renewable source ;~),
coloured the water nicely, and if used in the aquarium, many fish like to
dig under the leaf litter.

Asian breeders use Terbang leaves. I've also used them (I bought a large
box). I never took controlled measurements of anything though. Not all
leaves are fish-safe (avoid trees which can winter their leaves as there is
some type of 'glycol' at work), and any tree sap is suspect (so leaves
should be well dried). I've read that oak leaves are good.

Old literature suggests oak leaves, willow back, ceder root all
work. Betta poeple use almond leaves which are damn expensive.

The European Cryptocoryne people have fond that without Beech
tree leaf litter they can not grow some plants properly
at all (the acid loving crypts, in the cordata group)

Thanks for the input - I hoped this would not turn into a oh yeah, so
you're a vegetarian but you wear leather boots kind of discussion. The
mention of oak leaves caught my attention. I have a very old banjo
catfish, at least 15 years old, who once had a nice sandpile in his
tank but over the years the sand has sort of mixed with the
surrounding gravel and the closest thing he has for borrowing into is
a huge mass of java fern. I was thinking about building a new burial
ground for him, and though of leaf litter. Over a period of three or
four days, I had a big kettle half filled with oak leaves, trying to
determine if they would sink, or just float around eternally. After
the first day, I decided to boil them - for a few hours - powerful
aroma buy still not sinking to the bottom. Thinking back, however,
I'll bet the tea produced from that experiment would make for some
very nice blackwater. I keep a few large compost bins going for my
gardens, and my eventual plan is to experiment with compost tea as a
blackwater extract, but it will be a couple of months before the snow
goes and the compost thaws and begins cooking again - which is how I
ended up looking at blackwater snake oil at the pet shop. The main
ingredients in my compost is shredded oak leaves and horse pucky.

Mr Gardener - who is not a vegetarian