Anna tests Leaf Water so you don’t have to

fourteen–steps:

Heya so I ordered a buncha various leaves from Tannin Aquatics a few months back meaning to use them as snail food. Most botanicals release tannins and have some degree of effect on pH and KH. But since my snails are hard water, high pH kiddos, I wanted to check and see what sort of effects each one had on the water before I went chucking them in my tank so I knew how much was safe to use and how often. 

So I did some scIENCE and tested a piece of each leaf (tried to weigh em but it was too light for my scale so I just tried to get them roughly the same size), microwaved 4 minutes so they’d sink, then left in a glass with 1 cup of fresh tap water, plus a control of plain water, for uhhh four days? Tested pH before and after and boom bing bam voila I know which Leaf is Strong like Russian Winter.

Anyway it was useful for me but also may be useful for you guys if you’re considering botanicals and want to know how they’ll affect your water.

Start pH: ***
—————–Test results——————

Control: 8.1 

Artocarpus: 8.0

Catappa: 7.2

Loquat: 6.3

Guava: 7.9

Jackfruit: 7.8 

***The start pH was 7.2, but my tap always comes out lower and stabilizes up around 8-8.2 within about a day of going into any of my tanks, I figure it’s dissolved gasses since I’m in an apartment with pressurized pumps. I decided to make my judgements comparing each one to the final control result of 8.1 instead of a net change from 7.2, since I really wanted to know how it would affect my tank water not fresh-from-the-tap water

********** I also got mulberry leaves! But those are fragile and decompose fast so don’t really make good long term botanicals. And my snails and shrimp devour them in like 3 hours flat 😛

As far as yard leaves, I don’t have any official measurements, but oak leaves have a lot of tannins. If you’re looking for leaves that won’t affect your water too much, pecan leaves break down relatively fast but don’t release a significant amount of tannins. Tannins are good for calming stressed or light-sensitive fish, some fish won’t do well without them, and they add a level of realism to your tank, but most species of fish don’t really need water that looks like iced tea.