Eradicating leeches

PuppyFluffer

PuppyFluffer

AC Members
Jan 9, 2008
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east coast USA
I have some leeches in my 10 gallon tank. They either came in with some live black worms or on a plant I bought at the lfs.

I have a positive identification on them. See my thread here for the background story:http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=155473&highlight=leech

Tank specs:
10 gallon
sand substrate
1 piece driftwood
narrow leaf java fern
anubias
java moss
AC filter
second Whisper filter

3 male platy
1 male guppy
2 nerite snails

My plan:
Move fish to qt tank
Move snails to another tank (snails are not hosts to them I understand)

Dip java fern and anubias in potassium permanganate and save them

Everything else NUKE with high saline and probably bleach too, including the filters.

I'll toss the substrate and start over.

I can't find much about the life cycle of these things. Is it possible for them to be attached to the fish in a stage of life that is not visible to the naked eye? I understand that they attach, feed, then detatch and hide til hungry again.

Is there any treatment that I need to do directly to the fish?
 
I'm pretty sure they don't have any internal parasitic phase in their life cycle. They just hatch from their eggs and grow from there. But the eggs may not be visible or obvious.
 
i dont know how the react to salt they may not like it so you could remove everything and add some salt to the tank that may kill it either that or just remove everything and make sure the lid is sealed up really good and let it starve to death
 
I googled it and found the following info....

Leeches are parasite that are easy to spot and identify as they tend to be large enough to be spotted with the naked eye. Leeches are worms that often appear hearth shaped as they curle themselves toward the body of the fish. Leeches attached themselves onto the body, fins or gills. Leeches can only be found in your aquarium if you have introduced them to your aquarium somehow. The main way to introduce leeches is with live food that has been caught in leech infested waters. Refraining from feeding live food you have not cultivated yourself and especial wild caught live food will dramatically reduce the risk of getting leeches in your aquarium. Leeches can also be introduced with new fish and plants. You should therefore carefully examine new fish and the water in the bag for leeches before letting the fish into you aquarium. Ideally you should also keep the new fish quarantined for a while to prevent introducing other diseases. Plants should also be inspected to avoid introducing leeches, and to be extra safe you can place new plants in a 5 mg/l potassium permanganate solution for about an hour before adding them to your aquarium. The potassium permanganate will kill any leeches that might hide among the plants in question.

It might be tempting to get a pair of pliers and manually remove the leeches from you fish but you should never do that. This is due to the fact that the leeches borrow themselves into the surface of the fish and forcibly removing them can cause serious damage to the fish. You should instead bath the fish for 12-15 minutes in a 2.5% salt solution. This will most likely cause the leech to release its grip on the fish and if it doesn't, it should at least have loosened it enough for you to be able to remove it using pliers without damaging the fish seriously. Never use this method on salt sensitive fish such as rays and certain catfish species. For salt sensitive species or if you prefer to medicate your entire tank (to make sure to remove all leeches) I recommend adding 0.25 mg Trichlorofon for every litre water in your aquarium If you choose to treat the entire tank I recommend digging up your plants and using the earlier mentioned method to kill any leeches that might be hiding.
 
Thanks. I found the above info online as well.

I need to learn what the life cycle of the leech is. I don't want to transport any of them on the fish into QT and have to do this all again.

I plan on doing the potassium permanganate dip on the one or two plants I desire to save.

I'm going to salt AND bleach the heck out of this tank and totally start over again.

I'll never feed black worms again nor put any plants in my tank I've not dipped.
 
put a penny in your filter (wash it good) this will kill the snails and possibly the leeches.
 
where do you get the potassium permanganate? only curious since i was planning to buy a large number of plants soon for my tank.
 
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