wetmanNY
Posts: 1984
From: New York NY
Registered: Jul 1999
posted November 09, 2002 05:38 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's that time again. I ran out of dried autumn leaves around Labor Day this year, partly because I was giving away pasta boxes full of last year's beech leaves.
I like Cutleaf Beech best. But this year I'm going to try Japanese maples and magnolia leaves. I wait til the trees have let them go, so that nitrogen etc. has been withdrawn by the tree. What's left is mostly cellulose and lasts a couple of months in the aquarium before it's completely shredded.
I like leaf litter so much I have to keep from putting leaves into all my tanks.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TJcanada
Posts: 579
From: Ontario,Canada
Registered: Jan 2002
posted November 09, 2002 06:20 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*hehe*-I'll send you my japanese maple leaves once they've all fallen...
Indulge me...why are you putting them into your tank(s)?
TJ
------------------
Visit: Tom's Place
My site:BackyardPuddle
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
wetmanNY
Posts: 1984
From: New York NY
Registered: Jul 1999
posted November 09, 2002 06:39 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One small densely-planted tankhere has a male Apistogramma cacatuoides (his ladies have grown old and passed on) and pencilfishes with Otos. I like watching the Otos thrash around in the leaf litter. They seem bolder with all these protected spaces.
In a 33 gal. planted show tank, Dianema cats dig in the leaf litter for blackworms. Sturisoma cats and Farlowella in there can make themselves completely camouflaged...
I guess I just really enjoy the forest-stream look of leaf litter.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TJcanada
Posts: 579
From: Ontario,Canada
Registered: Jan 2002
posted November 09, 2002 06:48 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That's cool - thanks...
*let me know if you want those leaves..they're falling as I type... *
------------------
Visit: Tom's Place
My site:BackyardPuddle
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
needanick99
unregistered posted November 09, 2002 08:12 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
how do you keep them out of the filter?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr.Jingles
Posts: 911
From: MI, USA
Registered: Aug 2000
posted November 09, 2002 08:17 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
how do you make them sink? isnt organic material bad for the tank when it decomposes?
------------------
Hebrew 10:39 But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved.
My Tank Specs
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
wetmanNY
Posts: 1984
From: New York NY
Registered: Jul 1999
posted November 09, 2002 08:36 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, even if you hold them underwater for a few moments when you first put them in the tank, they do blow around for a day or so. Fetch up on the filter intake a little. Then they settle down and make loose piles on the substrate.
Green leaves decompose and add all kinds of nitrogen and sugars from sap etc. No good.
But deciduous trees have the sense to withdraw all the good stuff that could go bad in the aquarium, when nights start to get cool and day length shortens. They stash it in permanent tissue, like roots. Dried fallen leaves give off tannins (oak leaves especially) but they don't foul the water.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
kmandu
Posts: 62
From: seattle
Registered: Sep 2002
posted November 10, 2002 07:03 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I had to experiment after reading your post! I put maple leaves in my ten gallon and with the light filtering through it is increadibly beautiful! Do i need to worry about the tanins changing the ph?
thanks for sharing the idea... a natural looking tank is wonderful...and the fish like it too!
vikki k
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
revant01
Posts: 94
From: Sydney Australia
Registered: Jan 2002
posted November 11, 2002 05:14 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey thats not a bad idea for a planted tank. The starch that makes up the dried leaves will decompose into CO2 and this helps the problem of having to add CO2 with some injection system. You are right about not having to worry about nitrogen or other stuff much because these are all removed with the proteins and pigments when the plants leaves turn. I think ill try this in my planted tank next autumn. ( I am in AUS so summer is just starting)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Faramir
Posts: 681
From: Sheffield UK
Registered: Nov 98
posted November 12, 2002 04:10 AM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you've got checkerboard cichlids, leaf litter is a must. They actually pick up leaves, turn them over and search under them for food. It's their natural foraging method, and a joy to watch.
[This message has been edited by Faramir (edited November 12, 2002).]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Gipper
Posts: 394
From: Columbus, Ohio
Registered: Jan 2002
posted November 12, 2002 08:49 AM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Never heard of that!
How long do the leaves last? IS this just a seasonal thing you do or do you save leaves from the fall to be used all year long?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
wetmanNY
Posts: 1984
From: New York NY
Registered: Jul 1999
posted November 12, 2002 09:21 AM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two shopping bags packed with leaves serves me a full year, Gipper. Picture the old man on his hands and knees in Central Park, scooping leaves into a shopping bag, carefully picking out the good ones. Oh yeah, one of those. Is he talking to the leaves, Marjorie?
I have an unidentified miniature Bulldog Cat that only loses his shyness when he can get from here to there in a tunnel network of leaf litter.
Individual leaves last maybe six weeks. I add a small handful to a 33-gallon tank every other week or so, as required. Leached humic substances like tannins might effect some slight softening and pH reduction, kmandu. Marginal, even in my unbuffered water like Seattle's.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ChelseaSkinGirl
Posts: 302
From: Orlando, FL
Registered: May 2002
posted November 12, 2002 12:08 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would love to see this! Do you have any pictures of the leaves in the tank?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
wetmanNY
Posts: 1984
From: New York NY
Registered: Jul 1999
posted November 12, 2002 02:20 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chelsea Girl, I know I have to get photos onto www.skepticalaquarist.com , but the technology... the technology... so many steps...
This will come.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
rainbow5
Posts: 69
From: Bethel, CT, USA
Registered: Oct 2002
posted November 13, 2002 07:52 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How do you vaccuum around the leaves? Do they trap more detrius (sp)?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
wetmanNY
Posts: 1984
From: New York NY
Registered: Jul 1999
posted November 13, 2002 09:13 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My tanks are too dense with plants and wood to do much vacuuming. If the fishes don't stir up what detritus there is, I stir it up myself at water changes. When I'm reaching in to pinch out a leaf, I'll waggle my fingers under a log to flush detritus out into the open. What's blowing around the tank gets sucked up in the filter. I let the Loaches disturb the substrate: I mostly leave it alone. Once in a long while I'll drag the edge of a credit card or a sponge over it, to roll green surfaces under.
A layer of leaf litter keeps light off the gravel. Much less algae on the gravel surface. in a tank with leaf litter.
I feed a lot of greens, live blackworms, fd daphnia, fd bloodworms, a very little flake feed about every other day or every third. Probably less than half all in all of what most people are feeding their fish. There's never a speck of flake left over. Melania snails pick over any minute leavings. So there's not much detritus.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anton Wernher
Posts: 1052
From: NC
Registered: Feb 2002
posted November 15, 2002 02:56 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I just added some to my SA cichlid community after reading this thread.
As you can see I am still waiting for them to sink.
------------------
Anton Wernher
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RTR
Posts: 2377
From: Braddock Heights,MD.USA
Registered: Oct 98
posted November 15, 2002 03:46 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The only time I've used leaf litter was with a bare-bottom tank (white opaque glass bottom, plants in pots) for my one foray into Chaca keeping. I used oak leaves (as Anton's pic above) and loved the effect. Invisible fish - a specialty of mine it seems. I was a bit concerned about the Chacas ingesting leaves or leaf fragments, but it did not appear to be a problem.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
achu
Posts: 122
From: Austin, TX
Registered: Jun 99
posted November 15, 2002 04:34 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here in central Texas, we don't get a lot of really colorful leaves in the fall. By the time our leaves hit the ground, they're mostly brown. Does it matter what color leaf is used?
------------------
Amy Chu
Austin, Tx
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Onna Shinigami
Posts: 152
From:
Registered: Oct 2002
posted November 15, 2002 04:50 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thought I might ask, if it matters what type of leaf it is.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
wetmanNY
Posts: 1984
From: New York NY
Registered: Jul 1999
posted November 15, 2002 05:04 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Onna-san, it's a very good point. I'd avoid leaves from trees that are chemically active. None of the walnuts/hickories (Juglans0 for a classic example: nothing grows under a Black Walnut; juglone is mostly in roots, but I'd never risk a toxin like that in an enclosed system.
Sumac is dicey: poison ivy is a vining sumac after all. Smokebush has beautiful leaves, but they're very aromatic. It's a close cousin to sumac. I'd give it a pass.
Euonymus is also pretty active. But hell, so is Melaleuca alternifolia, and folks are putting tinctures of its oil into tanks at the drop of a hat!
Any other thoughts about avoiding certain leaves?
I wait till leaves are dry before I use them. The color isn't going to last. Brown is beautiful, eh!
I'm going to the New York Botanical Garden tomorrow with a small satchel. I'll tell y'all what I find.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
wetmanNY
Posts: 1984
From: New York NY
Registered: Jul 1999
posted November 15, 2002 05:10 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anton that's pretty handsome just like that. I'll be looking for Japanese maples with the small dissected leaves, to suit the miniature scale of my 10-gallon pencilfish glade.
I have to borrow a camera.
Posts: 1984
From: New York NY
Registered: Jul 1999
posted November 09, 2002 05:38 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's that time again. I ran out of dried autumn leaves around Labor Day this year, partly because I was giving away pasta boxes full of last year's beech leaves.
I like Cutleaf Beech best. But this year I'm going to try Japanese maples and magnolia leaves. I wait til the trees have let them go, so that nitrogen etc. has been withdrawn by the tree. What's left is mostly cellulose and lasts a couple of months in the aquarium before it's completely shredded.
I like leaf litter so much I have to keep from putting leaves into all my tanks.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TJcanada
Posts: 579
From: Ontario,Canada
Registered: Jan 2002
posted November 09, 2002 06:20 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*hehe*-I'll send you my japanese maple leaves once they've all fallen...
Indulge me...why are you putting them into your tank(s)?
TJ
------------------
Visit: Tom's Place
My site:BackyardPuddle
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
wetmanNY
Posts: 1984
From: New York NY
Registered: Jul 1999
posted November 09, 2002 06:39 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One small densely-planted tankhere has a male Apistogramma cacatuoides (his ladies have grown old and passed on) and pencilfishes with Otos. I like watching the Otos thrash around in the leaf litter. They seem bolder with all these protected spaces.
In a 33 gal. planted show tank, Dianema cats dig in the leaf litter for blackworms. Sturisoma cats and Farlowella in there can make themselves completely camouflaged...
I guess I just really enjoy the forest-stream look of leaf litter.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TJcanada
Posts: 579
From: Ontario,Canada
Registered: Jan 2002
posted November 09, 2002 06:48 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That's cool - thanks...
*let me know if you want those leaves..they're falling as I type... *
------------------
Visit: Tom's Place
My site:BackyardPuddle
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
needanick99
unregistered posted November 09, 2002 08:12 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
how do you keep them out of the filter?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr.Jingles
Posts: 911
From: MI, USA
Registered: Aug 2000
posted November 09, 2002 08:17 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
how do you make them sink? isnt organic material bad for the tank when it decomposes?
------------------
Hebrew 10:39 But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved.
My Tank Specs
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
wetmanNY
Posts: 1984
From: New York NY
Registered: Jul 1999
posted November 09, 2002 08:36 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, even if you hold them underwater for a few moments when you first put them in the tank, they do blow around for a day or so. Fetch up on the filter intake a little. Then they settle down and make loose piles on the substrate.
Green leaves decompose and add all kinds of nitrogen and sugars from sap etc. No good.
But deciduous trees have the sense to withdraw all the good stuff that could go bad in the aquarium, when nights start to get cool and day length shortens. They stash it in permanent tissue, like roots. Dried fallen leaves give off tannins (oak leaves especially) but they don't foul the water.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
kmandu
Posts: 62
From: seattle
Registered: Sep 2002
posted November 10, 2002 07:03 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I had to experiment after reading your post! I put maple leaves in my ten gallon and with the light filtering through it is increadibly beautiful! Do i need to worry about the tanins changing the ph?
thanks for sharing the idea... a natural looking tank is wonderful...and the fish like it too!
vikki k
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
revant01
Posts: 94
From: Sydney Australia
Registered: Jan 2002
posted November 11, 2002 05:14 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey thats not a bad idea for a planted tank. The starch that makes up the dried leaves will decompose into CO2 and this helps the problem of having to add CO2 with some injection system. You are right about not having to worry about nitrogen or other stuff much because these are all removed with the proteins and pigments when the plants leaves turn. I think ill try this in my planted tank next autumn. ( I am in AUS so summer is just starting)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Faramir
Posts: 681
From: Sheffield UK
Registered: Nov 98
posted November 12, 2002 04:10 AM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you've got checkerboard cichlids, leaf litter is a must. They actually pick up leaves, turn them over and search under them for food. It's their natural foraging method, and a joy to watch.
[This message has been edited by Faramir (edited November 12, 2002).]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Gipper
Posts: 394
From: Columbus, Ohio
Registered: Jan 2002
posted November 12, 2002 08:49 AM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Never heard of that!
How long do the leaves last? IS this just a seasonal thing you do or do you save leaves from the fall to be used all year long?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
wetmanNY
Posts: 1984
From: New York NY
Registered: Jul 1999
posted November 12, 2002 09:21 AM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two shopping bags packed with leaves serves me a full year, Gipper. Picture the old man on his hands and knees in Central Park, scooping leaves into a shopping bag, carefully picking out the good ones. Oh yeah, one of those. Is he talking to the leaves, Marjorie?
I have an unidentified miniature Bulldog Cat that only loses his shyness when he can get from here to there in a tunnel network of leaf litter.
Individual leaves last maybe six weeks. I add a small handful to a 33-gallon tank every other week or so, as required. Leached humic substances like tannins might effect some slight softening and pH reduction, kmandu. Marginal, even in my unbuffered water like Seattle's.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ChelseaSkinGirl
Posts: 302
From: Orlando, FL
Registered: May 2002
posted November 12, 2002 12:08 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would love to see this! Do you have any pictures of the leaves in the tank?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
wetmanNY
Posts: 1984
From: New York NY
Registered: Jul 1999
posted November 12, 2002 02:20 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chelsea Girl, I know I have to get photos onto www.skepticalaquarist.com , but the technology... the technology... so many steps...
This will come.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
rainbow5
Posts: 69
From: Bethel, CT, USA
Registered: Oct 2002
posted November 13, 2002 07:52 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How do you vaccuum around the leaves? Do they trap more detrius (sp)?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
wetmanNY
Posts: 1984
From: New York NY
Registered: Jul 1999
posted November 13, 2002 09:13 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My tanks are too dense with plants and wood to do much vacuuming. If the fishes don't stir up what detritus there is, I stir it up myself at water changes. When I'm reaching in to pinch out a leaf, I'll waggle my fingers under a log to flush detritus out into the open. What's blowing around the tank gets sucked up in the filter. I let the Loaches disturb the substrate: I mostly leave it alone. Once in a long while I'll drag the edge of a credit card or a sponge over it, to roll green surfaces under.
A layer of leaf litter keeps light off the gravel. Much less algae on the gravel surface. in a tank with leaf litter.
I feed a lot of greens, live blackworms, fd daphnia, fd bloodworms, a very little flake feed about every other day or every third. Probably less than half all in all of what most people are feeding their fish. There's never a speck of flake left over. Melania snails pick over any minute leavings. So there's not much detritus.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anton Wernher
Posts: 1052
From: NC
Registered: Feb 2002
posted November 15, 2002 02:56 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I just added some to my SA cichlid community after reading this thread.
As you can see I am still waiting for them to sink.
------------------
Anton Wernher
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RTR
Posts: 2377
From: Braddock Heights,MD.USA
Registered: Oct 98
posted November 15, 2002 03:46 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The only time I've used leaf litter was with a bare-bottom tank (white opaque glass bottom, plants in pots) for my one foray into Chaca keeping. I used oak leaves (as Anton's pic above) and loved the effect. Invisible fish - a specialty of mine it seems. I was a bit concerned about the Chacas ingesting leaves or leaf fragments, but it did not appear to be a problem.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
achu
Posts: 122
From: Austin, TX
Registered: Jun 99
posted November 15, 2002 04:34 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here in central Texas, we don't get a lot of really colorful leaves in the fall. By the time our leaves hit the ground, they're mostly brown. Does it matter what color leaf is used?
------------------
Amy Chu
Austin, Tx
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Onna Shinigami
Posts: 152
From:
Registered: Oct 2002
posted November 15, 2002 04:50 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thought I might ask, if it matters what type of leaf it is.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
wetmanNY
Posts: 1984
From: New York NY
Registered: Jul 1999
posted November 15, 2002 05:04 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Onna-san, it's a very good point. I'd avoid leaves from trees that are chemically active. None of the walnuts/hickories (Juglans0 for a classic example: nothing grows under a Black Walnut; juglone is mostly in roots, but I'd never risk a toxin like that in an enclosed system.
Sumac is dicey: poison ivy is a vining sumac after all. Smokebush has beautiful leaves, but they're very aromatic. It's a close cousin to sumac. I'd give it a pass.
Euonymus is also pretty active. But hell, so is Melaleuca alternifolia, and folks are putting tinctures of its oil into tanks at the drop of a hat!
Any other thoughts about avoiding certain leaves?
I wait till leaves are dry before I use them. The color isn't going to last. Brown is beautiful, eh!
I'm going to the New York Botanical Garden tomorrow with a small satchel. I'll tell y'all what I find.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
wetmanNY
Posts: 1984
From: New York NY
Registered: Jul 1999
posted November 15, 2002 05:10 PM IP: Logged
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anton that's pretty handsome just like that. I'll be looking for Japanese maples with the small dissected leaves, to suit the miniature scale of my 10-gallon pencilfish glade.
I have to borrow a camera.
