oak,ketapang leaves and water pH

[ganesan]

Heard people making blackwater extract by simply boiling these leaves and after cooling the tannin stained fluid filtering them into containers/bottles with a filter pad removing any thick particles.Then these can be poured into the tank to give a nice brownish effect as well as bringing down the pH.My query is how long can you store the blackwater in a bottle. I simply used to wash these leaves well and tie them together in a rubber band and drop them into the tank.Slowly in a couple of weeks the water gets the nice brown stain.

[fredyx]

IME I suggest to prepare the "tea" and use it right after it gets cold. The tea can be stored for one week more or less

[ganesan]

Thanks for the reply fredyx so that means one should not store the"tea" for more than a week. I had no idea about that and thought that it could be stored for months just like you get black water extracts in LFS from many brands, perhaps they add some other preservatives. I once simply put a bunch of washed ketapang dry leaves in a 100L plastic bucket and was away for a couple of weeks and when I returned the whole water was thick coffee brown. But one thing I realised very much today is never play with pH in a Discus tank as sudden changes can be catastrophic. I once used phosporic acid from Bigfish manufacturer co and just added about 5ml to my 90G tank with about 8 beauty Discus and guess what....all the discus grouped together in one corner and when I checked the pH(luckly I had one made from a Milwakee made comp) and the pH was about 3.8!!!. My pH used to be around 6 to 6.8.I then did 50% WC rapidly withing a couple of minutes and then when the pH was about 5.8 I waited for about a hour or so and again did about 25% WC and the fish started to swim freeely and luckily no Discus died.But one Discus got a cloudy white eye on one side but remained active until a couple of months back it died due to some other cause. After that incident I learnt two things...one to never mess with pH and two never to use phosporic acids and I threw that bottle away. Actually it was meant for pond use and perhaps I overdosed it in my tank. But leaves are the best as the pH changes are very gradual

[fredyx]

I'm pretty sure that commercial extracts have preservatives, the homemade tea will begin to look fungus-like after one week aprox. When I use it I just boil it for 5 mins (1 liter of water x 1 big leaf) let it cool... and to the aquariums... it gives a brownish tint to the water but, unless you have very low kh the ph won´t move much...