Chana V—November 12, 2025✓ Verified purchase
Giving this a 5 star review! Our betta had the beginning look of fin rot. I added 6 of these leaves, with dosed aquarium salt to his 5.5 gallon, and the fin rot is gone. The water didn’t turn as brown as I thought it would. There is no smell, and nothing to clean. Very easy, just threw in a bunch of these leaves and my sweet betta looks great after 24 hours! This is a good quality catappa leaf, though the leaves are small and you may want to add more than the amount recommended on the packaging. Made my betta healthy again without having to buy expensive medicine. Read more
Amy—January 17, 2026✓ Verified purchase
Love what these leaves did to my tanks! I have 5 tanks, all but one would benefit from tannins and these were so affordable, and worked great so far. Just got them yesterday, but so far so good, I read other reviews of people not getting g the color payoff they wanted when just placing the leaves in the tank, so I chose to boil a small handful of leaves in some water for about 30 minutes, let it cool, then poured the water and the leaves into my tanks, they have STUNNING color and my fish already seem happier. Hoping these will help with fin rot in my bettas. Would definitely buy again. Read more
Mallory—October 25, 2025✓ Verified purchase
I love this product, and my betta does too! It does change the color of the water, but it perfectly balanced the levels in my tank and it doesn’t look dirty it looks natural. All I had to do was toss a couple in the top of my tank and within a couple minutes my tank was where it needed to be. So all in all they were easy to use, they are great quality, safe for my fish, and make the tank healthy. I will definitely be using this again and again. Read more
Lyra Kitsune—October 13, 2023✓ Verified purchase
10/10/2023: I bought this product "100pc Catappa IAL Leaves" on September 18, 2023. Safe to say I've used this product (multiple leaves) over the course of a month for both my tanks. It does work as hides for my ghost shrimp and they love to graze on it, BUT- it does NOT have the desired effects! No tannins! I tried making a tannin extract with multiple leaves in a small glass container with BOILING water, as I've done before with larger leaves that came from Vietnam (home country). Wanna know the results? No tannins! The Vietnamese leaves were also catappa leaves, and they leaked tannins, tons of them! I boiled both types of leaves to rid of pests, but I am absolutely FLOORED with the SunGrow product! I love the tannin effect, this product has not been the greatest. Next time anyone I know goes to Vietnam, I'll be sure to ask them to take more catappa leaves instead of buying from here again. 4/26/2024: hello again. I've had these ins forage for a while and decided to bring them out again, to try it again to see if time had affected the product(s). The first time I used these was the review above. It never leaked significant amounts of tannins, or any at all. My previous time was boiling (again), but I had incorporated boiling with a pot for several minutes with a large amount of water. It took a long time for the leaves to boil down and change color, but when it did, it looked like the color of the leaves from Vietnam. I added more water (not necessary) and waited more, the water had become tannic after a long time of waiting! After a while, I was able to pour it into my tank (carefully and after it cooled!!!!) and the tank had changed very nicely! This time, today, I'm just putting it into a small pot of water with some leaves. I can already smell the tea lol, and the leaves' color has changed drastically, though the water isn't stained yet. The method I'm using now is a DIY Blackwater extract, aka tannin extract. My goal is to achieve the same effects as the first successful time. lol I can already see the tannins coming out. Uh, what I wanted to say was, if it doesn't seem fresh enough or "work" for you, please consider making a backwater/tannin extract with these leaves. They will break down in the boiling water eventually, causing tannins to leak. You might have to wait a long time though. I'm already about 5-15minutes into boiling these "stale" ones I got the first time around. Read more


Living Wage Advocate—December 21, 2025✓ Verified purchase
I didn't know what to expect, I just thought a bit of Tannin for my tank would be a good thing (that I knew) but I'm not an expert on Catappa leaves. These look like Catappa leaves. I threw about 5 in each of my two ten gallon tanks. Rinsed under water , filtered water, before dropping them in. They came in good shape. They're small per the package description. Read more