I'm 99.9% sure, but could you verify? Took the green leaf off the tree and the brown ones off the ground under the tree.
I have a 2.5g tank lighty planted with 2 javas, a few small straggly sword cuttings, and some kind of plant, perhaps a wort of some sort, floating on top. Gravel substrate, a peice of driftwood, and a large rainbow stone.
Can I use these leaves (the brown ones)? How many in a 2.5g tank? Do I boil them first to disinfect and get rid of tanins? Any info is appreciated.
Only use the brown ones, and my feeling is that you should use the oldest looking leaves you can find. The newer the leaf, the more residual sugar and tannins it will contain.
If you didn't read it before, I have noticed that the leaves can cause a minor bacterial bloom on the leaf surfaces that lasts a few days to a week. This is nothing more than some bacteria consuming the residual sugars in the leaf. In my tanks, it looks like a transparent white gelatin. If this does occur, don't worry about it as it will go away as soon as those sugars have been consumed. Monitor your water to ensure that there is not a sudden spike in nitrates, but sugars do not contain nitrates so it should not be a problem at all.
I would suggest adding a couple leaves at a time if you want to minimize yellow/brown water from leaching tannins (or soak the leaves in a bucket for a couple weeks before transferring to your shrimp tank).
Hope this helps. Feel free to ask anything I didn't cover.
Can I boil them a bit to disinfect them? I hate to just take something that was laying on the ground and dump them in the tank. Or is boiling them a bad idea?
Oh one more thing. Does the leaf have to be whole or can I break it into smaller peices? Looking at my tank I don't think I have enough free room in the bottom for a whole leaf.
you really don't have to disinfect them. Leaves on the ground are highly unlikely to carry anything that could be dangerous to your shrimp (in fact, they are more likely to harbor some beneficial organisms). When I selected my leaves, I chose the moldiest looking oldest leaves I could find and I have had great success with these.
Just like cooking vegetables, boiling the leaves will cause them to soften and degrade quickly, perhaps too quickly.
But if you are set on disinfecting them, I would do nothing more than quickly dip them into the boiling water for no more than a couple seconds.
And yes, you can break them down into any size piece that you think will work in your tank.
You could try the quick boil method as Yucca described or you can use oak leaves which only need a couple of days of soaking. I prefer the later choice if I were in a hurry. I hope everything turns out well for you.
You should boil all leaves before adding to a tank. There are pretty nasty things you can bring to your tank with leaves. Like planaria, hydra and so on.
Those do not always require water, but can live in a permanently humid leave layer on the ground of a forest, too.
Sorry, maybe I did not make my point clear. There are like old leaves in a forest, lying there for some weeks or months and slowly decaying. These leaves may be contaminated with above mentioned critters. I would chose fresh and dry brown ones, too.
Green ones are usually not that fine, as they can spoil the water because they contain sugars and organic acids. As a result bacteria living in the free water will reproduce en masse and turn the water cloudy and white.
Bacteria are a fine food for invertebrates, but we need those settled bacteria, that do not live in the open water but form a biofilm on the substrate. Those settled bacteria form colonies on leaves and feed on them without harming our critters. Freewater bacteria can make the crayfish ill.
I think the socking of the leaves will still clean them off.
