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Hallo!
I´m new here and I´m just preparing my first Paro tank 🙂
I´ve a question about leaves.Does anyone here has experience with walnut leaves?
For my Sulawesi Tylomelanias I have often given a dried, green autumn walnut leave in the tank, before using them I shortly prepare them into boiled water.The Tylos love them, and I think the leaves also do a desintectional job. Am I right?
But perhaps they are too strong for Paros? And the normally used “Seemandelbaumblätter” are original in their habitat??????I ask because I have a garden with walnut trees … 😉
But I don’t have a problem with buying “Seemandelbaumblätter”…
with best regards,
DorotheeHello,
I dont use this kind of leaf in aquaria.
I always heard old people said nothing grow under those trees.Just a social imagination maybe …?
In french we say ” une légende urbaine”Let me see
David
I have no information on the use of walnut trees, but the catappa (Seemandelbaumblätter) trees are unlikely to be part of the Parosphromenus ecosystem, as they are mainly found along the coast. I doubt the tree would be able to survive in a peat swamp. The use of catappa leaves probably came about because they are grown as ornamental specimens in many towns and villages in south east asia especially Thailand, and the leaves were easy to come by.
If nothing grows under a walnut, it problably means the leaves contain high doses of tannins and other acidifying agents, like oak and beech. It’s probably a good species for use in paro tanks then. I would at least try it.
Only read this before 😉
Walnut leaves emit Juglon which is a very efficient stuff impeding other plants to grow below these trees. I once experimented with these leaves in the Paro-aquarium but stopped it because the effect of Juglon on the milieu is not well investigated and may be dangerous.
Catappa leaves do not occur in Paro-biotopes, but they have a mild bacteriocide effect if used in a dried form in the aquarium. Many breeders have a good experience using them. But fresh only; when under water they become older than six or eight weeks they change to a danger with opposite effect. The best thing is to replace them before by a new one.
Thank you all very much for the many serious answers!
I see, I will not use walnut in blackwater!
I will do as you recommend and use catappa and leeves of the beech
tree for the ground after the the tank filter will have began to do its work right!Thanks, Dorothee
I would neither use walnut shells nor catappa nor oak leaf because these plants increase the electrical conductivity more than the “old” tips to lower pH like peat or alder.
I cannot measure tannins but pH and EC. Walnut a.s.o. can reduce pH to 5, peat and alder to 3.5 without boosting the EC.
On the other hand leaf is looking very nice, a difficult decision… 🙂
Increase in conductivity isn’t directly a bad thing. For instance, NaCL will vastly increase conductivity, whilst being beneficial in low amounts.
[quote=”bartian” post=3147]Increase in conductivity isn’t directly a bad thing[/quote]Of course, but this is a summary parameter and nobody knows in detail, which components are causing the boost. I’m not sure whether the increase is a higher NaCl-concentration or a cumulation of “bad things”.
Nicolas is better than me to explain this but …
if you boil oak leaves the water is less coloured and pH fall well no ?
Phenol make uprise conductivity but the decomposition of leaves product hydrogen wich make fall the pH and not modify too much the conductivity.
I use to put peat pellets in filter, peat moss in socks and boiled leaves and alder with many ceratopteris cornuta in the tank and i manage to have very low pH around 2.72- 3 with conductivity like 12 to 20 µS/cm.David
PS : Nicolas au secours !!!!
[quote=”David” post=3149][…] manage to have very low pH around 2.72- 3 with conductivity like 12 to 20 µS/cm.[/quote]Never ever, I’m sorry! It’ not possible to gain very low conductivity at very low pH, this would violate some electrochemical laws. I think your analyzers went wrong.
Try to measure the output of an cation exchanger; its pH will be very low, about 2.7 or lower, depending on the used tapwaters cation concentration, and its EC will skyrocket to 500 µS/cm and much more. This is because the acid ions H3O+ have their part in conductivity, the higher the concentration, the higher the conductivity.
I measured different humins in an oversaturated concentration and compared the data to a pure H3O+-curve which is caculable from electrochemical laws (named DHO here, blue curve).
A probe, which differs from the pure curve, contributes to conductivity in addition.
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