Indian Almond Leaves Low Grade ( Terminalia Catappa )
Ideal for making your own Blackwater Extract Mix
 
BASIC INFORMATION: 
 
Indian Almond Leaves ( Terminalia Catappa ) are one of the best water conditioners to promote healing and breeding amongst fish. Indian Almond Leaves ( Terminalia Catappa ) are also known as Ketapang, Tropical Almond, Sea Almond, Seemandelbaumblatter or Catappa. Indian Almond Leaves are also very popular amongst fish keepers/breeders as a natural medication and water conditioner for their Aquariums.

They increase fertility, health and vigor. Reduce the Ph in the water, aid in the recovery of diseased / damaged fish ( bacterial infections / fungal infections ) and the tannin that is realeased from the Indian Almond Leaves also quickly colours the water. Both the amateur and professional Aquarist also use Indian Almond Leaves to mimic the natural conditions of their fish in their aquarium. 
 
We offer 2 grades of Indian Almond Leaves ( Terminalia Catappa ) at Bettawan. Premium and Low Grade Indian Almond Leaves. Our Low Grade Indian Almond Leaves have larger holes and tears than our Premium Indian Almond Leaves. None the less, they are prepared in the same way as our Premium leaves and are still good quality leaves. They are good enough for resale and suitable for the buyer who dosn't care about the shape or form but cares about the quality and wants to make their tank as natural looking as possible.
 
Gathering :
 
The Indian Almond Leaves usually fall twice a year, we usually ignore the 1st fall as it's coming to the end of the rainy season and the majority of the leaves are damaged by the last rains of the rainy season. The main fall is in Jan/Feb and these are the Indian Almond Leaves that we gather.
 
As the time approaches and the Indian Almond trees leaves start to go red, we go out and clean all the previous years over growth from around the trees we gather from. We go through each leaf individually and all good premium Indian Almond Leaves are bagged and any not so good are piled onto the piles of the previous years overgrowth that we have made. The bagged good leaves are taking back to the dry shed and emptied into raised bays to dry out 100 % naturually.
 
PREPARATION :
A bag of big leaves will be sorted in the dry shed. Any small leaves are put into seperate bags and stored for future small leaf orders. The bag is then emptied into our specially built wash area and the Indian Almond Leaves are gently showered and left for an hour. This gets rid of any curls and folds in the leaves that may of occured while they were drying out in the bays in the dry shed and makes the leaves fresh and workable.
 
The Indian Almond Leaves are then dried with a damp clothes and piled into packs of 10 of similar sizes and then put into specially made presses. The presses are usually left outside durning the day for the leaves to sundry/press. Once dry, the leaves are boxed and stored.
 
For orders, the leaves are brushed to get rid of of any dust, dirt, seeds or small insects/eggs that may of got on them durning the pressing stage and while stored. Any leaves with 1 or 2 fungus spots, the fungus is cut out. Any leaves with lots of fungus are destroyed on fire.
 
We don't just gather, bag and ship, we spend a lot of time making sure we supply a quality product for our customers. We only select the best reddish/brown leaves, we never offer hand picked Indian Almond Leaves, only leaves that have natually fallen and are high in Tannin.

We only supply Premium leaves, all our leaves are 100% totally organic, dry and clean, no chemicals whatsoever are used on the trees we gather the leafrom. ves