# leaf litter as tank decor



## Hooky (25 Oct 2017)

Hi I am looking for some advice on using leaves in the aquarium. I want to create a blackwater look with a bed of oak leave and IAL for tannins, this will likely be for a display tank for a pair of wild betta’s from the splendens complex. What I am struggling to understand is these reduce PH, so how do you undertake regular water changes without causing a PH swing every time you do a water change?


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## roadmaster (25 Oct 2017)

Smaller water change.
If water for water change has much GH, then effect's of pH lowering from leaves will have minimal affect


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## dw1305 (25 Oct 2017)

Hi all, 





Hooky said:


> What I am struggling to understand is these reduce PH, so how do you undertake regular water changes without causing a PH swing every time you do a water change?


I'm a great fan of structural leaf litter and I agree with @roadmaster, the leaves will only soften the water if you have soft water to start with. The tannins and humic compounds are "weak" acids.

The other thing is that in soft water <"pH is fundamentally unstable">, and in a soft water planted tank you will get <"diurnal variation in pH"> as the relative ratios of CO2 and dissolved oxygen change during photosynthesis. If you have at the linked threads (and links in them) it gives a bit more detail. 

I have hard tap water and I use rain-water in the tanks and I don't monitor pH. I just occasionally measure conductivity and keep it in the 80 - 150 microS region.  

If you use facebook? you could have a look at Colin Dunlop's "fishhut" facebook group, he is pretty knowledgeable about both _Betta_ spp. and <"leaf litter">. 

cheers Darrel


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## Edvet (25 Oct 2017)

dw1305 said:


> he tannins and humic compounds are "weak" acids.


Weak acid reactions won't hurt the fish. For instance when dosing CO2 in soft water pH swings of 2 points can occur everyday. These are harmless.
Imagine wild fish living in a small black water creek when the rain season starts and the level raises several meters in a few days


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## ceg4048 (26 Oct 2017)

Hooky said:


> What I am struggling to understand is these reduce PH, so how do you undertake regular water changes without causing a PH swing every time you do a water change?


As stated above, fish really do not care about pH.What they care about is cleanliness and freedom from toxic substances in the water.
Some toxins also have an affect on pH, other toxins may have very little effect.

By adhering to a policy of frequent water changes you can help to maintain cleanliness and to reduce the chance of the buildup of toxins.
Trying to control pH will typically do more damage than good, so it's bets to keep the tank as clean as possible and let the pH do what it wants.

Cheers,


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## Aqua360 (27 Oct 2017)

i am by no means experienced on it, but what i do is get a bunch of indian almond leaves, boil them in a pan and leave overnight; i'll then do a water change and add some of the blackwater along with some leaves, and it has a pretty significant blackening of the water.

Oddly it tends to then lighten up over a week or so, then i repeat the procedure; i haven't tested the ph etc but the fish seem to do well in it


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## Edvet (27 Oct 2017)

Aqua360 said:


> boil them in a pan


No need for that.
I either pre-soak them so they sink as i add them to the tank, or just throw a few in the tank and they will sink in a day


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## Aqua360 (27 Oct 2017)

Edvet said:


> No need for that.
> I either pre-soak them so they sink as i add them to the tank, or just throw a few in the tank and they will sink in a day



please elaborate, are you suggesting the water reaches the same level of colouration in less than 24 hours; without boiling?


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## roadmaster (27 Oct 2017)

Would not care if it reached coloration in 24 hours or a couple days in the tank with or without boiling.
 Boiling is a good way to produce your own extract be it with the IAL or peat.
Pour it through some cheese cloth and bottle it .
I gather some large birch leaves from the yard sometimes and toss em in the aquarium after soaking them for a couple days in a bucket.
The young bristlenose and shrimp are on em like ducks on a june bug.(snails too).


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## Bart Hazes (27 Oct 2017)

Trying to maintain a stable pH well below your tap water source is "mopping with the tap still running" (Dutch proverb). Either choose fish that are comfortable in your local tap water or switch to rainwater or RO water. They have very low buffering capacity so won't really affect tank pH during top-ups and water changes. Without further actions pH should drop to the 6.2-6.7 range, assuming you don't have carbonate-containing substrate/rocks in the tank. I have found the pH to also be stable. Getting the pH to go lower than 6 is still a work in progress for me and I'm just about 5.8-6.2 in my most acidic tanks now.
I can't really agree with ceg4048. Some fish care and some don't about pH. More so if you have wild-caught fish and try to get them to spawn and have eggs hatch and fry survive. Same with oxygenation, hardness, water cleanliness, temperature stability etc. My experience is that fish in general are quite tolerant to conditions that differ from 'optimal values' and that pristine water increases tolerance to deviations in hardness, pH, etc (just my personal impression). That said, I get personal pleasure out of learning what their natural conditions look like and trying to replicate that in my tanks.


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## ceg4048 (27 Oct 2017)

Bart Hazes said:


> Some fish care and some don't about pH. More so if you have wild-caught fish and try to get them to spawn and have eggs hatch and fry survive. Same with oxygenation, hardness, water cleanliness, temperature stability etc. My experience is that fish in general are quite tolerant to conditions that differ from 'optimal values' and that pristine water increases tolerance to deviations in hardness, pH, etc (just my personal impression). That said, I get personal pleasure out of learning what their natural conditions look like and trying to replicate that in my tanks.


As I mentioned, pH is a consequence of all these other items that you noted. There are lots of avenues where the pH may rise or fall. What you may interpret as a fish's response to pH will actually be a response to some other component in the water that also has an effect on pH. So for example, under breeding conditions, it can easily be that the fish respond specifically to a set of tanins in the water which do affect the pH. Using some other acid to lower the pH may or may not trigger the same response. It's the combination of many things, including psychology and health, that trigger specific responses. This is why different hobbyists have been able to trigger breeding under various sets of conditions.

The context under which the OP is operating does not require any attention to managing pH. Hesitating to change water because the pH of the new water will be different from the old is not a valid concern and often leads to more problems than are solved.

The idea is to free ones mind of the dependency on pH, because it is simply not that important in and of itself.

Cheers,

Cheers,


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