# Crazy Tea and coffee idea



## thermo (Feb 26, 2013)

Hi all, 

Long time reader, but I rarely post. I'm slightly past newbie, but still a novice. Anyway, I have a question about reusing spent tea and coffee. 

As you all may or may not know, spent tea and coffee both a lot of nutrients and once composted can be used as a fertilizer for plants. Now my question is, can we use spent (and well drained) coffee for a soil additive similar to coconut husk? Second, living in Asia, I have access to about a billion tons of spent tealeaf (exaggeration of course). Anyway, could this material be dried then reused as leaf litter? Does it even need to be dried? What about food for springtails? Any ideas on how to reuse these materials?

Thanks, 

David


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## FoxHound (Oct 7, 2011)

I would avoid it. That's just me but the thought of caffeine and other non known nutrient sources in my vivs gives me the shivers. I appreciate the ingenuity behind the question don't get me wrong. There are just too many unknowns here. I could be wrong... but yeah no sense in harming the frogs.


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## thermo (Feb 26, 2013)

Ah yeah, this is a good point. Thanks for pointing that out. I was just so excited because I recently learned about composting. 

David


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## FoxHound (Oct 7, 2011)

No problem at all! Glad to help!


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## easternversant (Sep 4, 2012)

FoxHound said:


> I would avoid it. That's just me but the thought of caffeine and other non known nutrient sources in my vivs gives me the shivers. I appreciate the ingenuity behind the question don't get me wrong. There are just too many unknowns here. I could be wrong... but yeah no sense in harming the frogs.


Caffeine is actually just an alkaloid! 

Edit: I should specify that dendrobatid toxins are alkaloids.


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## AlexD (Sep 19, 2007)

The fact that it is a chemical is an alkaloid doesn't mean it isn't dangerous to people or frogs. Cocaine is an "just" alkaloid, but I don't think anyone is going to start using coca leaves in the bottom of their tanks.


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## easternversant (Sep 4, 2012)

AlexD said:


> The fact that it is a chemical is an alkaloid doesn't mean it isn't dangerous to people or frogs. Cocaine is an "just" alkaloid, but I don't think anyone is going to start using coca leaves in the bottom of their tanks.


Frogs sequester alkaloids.

And coca leaves are quite tasty. They are good for chewing, and altitude sickness. La hoja de coca no es una droga! Cocaine is chemically synthesized from coca, but people (especially in the Andes) have been using coca for a very long time.


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## epiphytes etc. (Nov 22, 2010)

Back in the day, people used tea to make blackwater for aquariums.


EDIT: also, I'd be willing to bet that natural rainforest leaf litter is full of more alkaloids than we can imagine.


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## hypostatic (Apr 25, 2011)

With hundreds of different plant species occupying the same small area, you would find a lot of odd chemicals in the Amazon rain forest leaf litter.

Guarana is native to the region, and its seeds, contain caffeine (twice as much as coffee beans), theophylline, and theobromine. I don't know about how much the guarana plant has in its leaves, but caffeine is a very common chemical in the plant world.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/science/plants-use-caffeine-to-lure-bees-scientists-find.html?_r=0


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## Venutus1 (Feb 13, 2010)

these work well:
Amy's 50g C Indian Almond Catappa Leaves Betta Plecos | eBay

lol ... I even drink it... see cup.

just kidding.
he he


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## kate801 (Jul 7, 2011)

I've thought about it. We go through a lot of tea owning a tea company. There was also a post a while back about using Rooibos for tadpoles.


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## thermo (Feb 26, 2013)

See the thing is, I drink a lot of pu'er, which totally reminds me of swamp water . Anyway, was hoping to avoid trying to find new leaf litter too often and not waste plant material.


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## ICS523 (Mar 10, 2012)

I doubt it will set fire to the sun and turn your viv into a post-apocalyptic hellscape. That said, what will this add to the substrate anyway?


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## epiphytes etc. (Nov 22, 2010)

I also wanted to add, if they are "used" tea leaves, how much caffeine is really left in them?


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## easternversant (Sep 4, 2012)

I'm intrigued, so I'm going to be keeping all my leftover coffee grounds for a while to make a springtail culture. It may be a nice substrate, or I may just have super hopped up (get it?) springtails!


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## oddlot (Jun 28, 2010)

easternversant said:


> I'm intrigued, so I'm going to be keeping all my leftover coffee grounds for a while to make a springtail culture. It may be a nice substrate, or I may just have super hopped up (get it?) springtails!


 HaHa,What's the worst that can happen.....the springs jump ten feet high


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## thermo (Feb 26, 2013)

Lol, those springtail comments are great. 

@ICS, I'm not sure it would add much except natural fertilizer (after decomposition, tea leaves have a lot of nutrition left in them) and it would last a lot longer than most leaf litter due to antimicrobial/fungal properties of tea and coffee, but truthfully, I just don't want to throw away good material that I use every day.

Also, some of my high end teas actually look quite beautiful. I'll post some pics when I get a chance, but spent pu'er looks like dark bark mulch or dark leaf litter (if whole leaf), and some oolongs and oriental beauty are actually whole leaves that look like tree tips. Really nice looking stuff, and a nice change from the standard oak or magnolia due to added color (some or green, brown, or red) and they are soft/supple when wet.


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## skanderson (Aug 25, 2011)

just for a few quick points. tea leave contain a higher percentage of caffeine than coffee does. it is just that steeping them removes a lower percentage of the caffeine than brewing the coffee does. that being said i would doubt that using small quantities would have adverse effects. also cocaine is present in coca leaves, just in very small quantities. the chemicals are used to remove and concentrate it from the leaves. i have placed coffee grounds in compost piles and had thriving fauna in them, but i wouldnt place them in my viv.


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## thermo (Feb 26, 2013)

easternversant said:


> I'm intrigued, so I'm going to be keeping all my leftover coffee grounds for a while to make a springtail culture. It may be a nice substrate, or I may just have super hopped up (get it?) springtails!


FYI, I'm not sure I would use it by itself, coffee and tea for that matter, both decompose eventually, it's just not super rapid without heat. Perhaps mix it with charcoal or something that doesn't break down.


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## hypostatic (Apr 25, 2011)

Oh, I would also like to add that plants also use caffeine as a pesticide to keep bugs from eating them:
Slugging It Out with Caffeine | Agriculture | Science News

According to that article caffeine has also been used as a pesticide against frogs in hawaii


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## Toxic (Jul 9, 2012)

A few months ago i tried adding some drained coffee to my springtail culture. The next day they were all dead.


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## inraen (Mar 22, 2013)

I used to work in a research lab whose primary focus was the evolution of certain ocular genes in killifish. These fish would live in rather clear water as well as swampy/brackish water and the lab thought that this variation in environment caused genetic divergence. In order to simulate the swampy environment, we used caffiene-free lipton iced tea. There was no effect on many generations of killifish living in water treated as such. So perhaps using caffeine-free varieties?


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## thermo (Feb 26, 2013)

Hehe, maybe it's just the crappy lipton tea . 

@toxic, when you say drained coffee, how drained? Did you by chance measure the pH? Perhaps the coffee made the system too acidic. I'm curious to know more, unless of course you just threw it out.


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## redina (Jul 30, 2012)

I have tried à springtail culture on espresso pucks. They all died.


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## Toxic (Jul 9, 2012)

thermo said:


> Hehe, maybe it's just the crappy lipton tea .
> 
> @toxic, when you say drained coffee, how drained? Did you by chance measure the pH? Perhaps the coffee made the system too acidic. I'm curious to know more, unless of course you just threw it out.


Drained as in... I made coffee in the morning and got the left over ground beans and put it in the springtail culture. I always put the left over beans on my house plants and they seem to love it because they grow really well. So i thought... "hmm... let me see if my sprintails like it" ...... They didn't lol


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## Athena (Mar 20, 2013)

I can't tell you for sure how caffeine effects our microfauna, and certainly not frogs for sure, but I can tell you for a fact that it seriously messes up daphnia. I did a little bit of work with them (they're a water quality indicator for freshwater systems), and even in pretty dilute concentrations it did... not nice things to their physiology. I should also mention that tobacco, alcohol, capsaicin (pepper spicy), common cleaners, fertilizer, and basically every pharmaceutical 'thing' that we pee out (that we tested) also bugs these guys. 

A lot of fun plant compounds that we ingest do creatively bad things to wee beasties -- which is sort of the evolutionary point -- as many others have said.

Keep in mind that the bugs (or vertebrates) that eat these plants with crazy alkaloid compounds are often obligate or highly adapted herbivores of the stuff.

And while our PDFs do sequester these alkaloid compounds, they're doing it in pretty small doses at a time. Just think about how much caffeine (or whatever compound we're talking about) is in your average hypothetical-coffee-eating ant, and the amount of caffeine it takes to give a 170lb human a buzz.

MASSIVE difference in order of magnitude.

I have absolutely no idea what that all amounts to in terms of frog husbandry, but I _personally_ would err on the side of caution. Hypothetically OK can still translate to dead or sick froggies.


If you still really want to use those coffee grounds, why not start a big outdoors compost pile/bucket and use the fully composted lovely organic soil in your bug cultures or plant pots? You can compost the rest of your food scraps that way too! The tea leaves would go nicely in there too.


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