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