Leech in new tank

[IanT76]

Hi all, my first post here and afraid it's a doozy...I have a new (1 week into cycle) planted tank and found a small leech in there this morning. In between spotting it and Googling what to do, it disappeared. It was definitely a leech (prior personal experience...), about 5mm long, milky translucent colour.

I've read several articles on various chemical treatments etc. but I live in Dubai where anything slightly out of the ordinary is nigh-on impossible to get. Can anyone please recommend what to do without involving anything more complex than simple household products? Sorry to back up a problem with another problem but these are the joys of living in the Middle East . Thanks in advance

 

[jlk]

Hi! Welcome to AA!!!!! If it was 'milky translucent color', I doubt it was a leech but more likely it was a nematode. I have personally dealt with leeches (AWFUL!!!!) and they are brown/black/reddish in color. Some nematodes are harmless but others are parasitic. I dont know which you may have. Common treatments for nematodes would be levamisole or fenbendazole, although these are likely not common treatments in your country. The best I can suggest is to increase your water changes & do lots of grav vacs as well as remove any that you may see immediately. Are you finding them on your fish?

 

[IanT76]

Hi & thanks for the welcome. I've Googled nematodes and they don't seem the same; this was an oblong body (5mm long) stretching out at one end into a "head" making the overall thing 10-12mm long. The nematodes just seem to be one uniform length, but please correct/forgive me if I'm wrong. I spotted it on the gravel to morning, but haven't seen it or any others since. I don't haven any fish in the tank yet and will wait now until I can get this under control, if needed. The guy at my LFS told me to add 1/2 a teaspoon of table salt to my tank (32g/120l), but I'm not too sure about this - he didn't seem that sure either!

 

[jlk]

Did it by any chance have a triangle shaped head? Leeches have distinct sucker-ends on their bodies rather than actual heads. Trust me, I tried everything with my leech problem. They are tough! The amount of salt needed to kill them is huge and would kill your plants as well. Do think you could possibly get a pic of one so we can figure out what you may have? I can link my leech thread if you want to see pics of mine....

 

[IanT76]

I say "head" - basically, the oblong body was elongating out and waving around, then planting down and the body moved up to it, then repeat. It just seemed...leechy, rather than wormy or flukey. If I spot the little bugger again, I'll grab a photo & post it. Do you think adding the 1/2 teaspoon will do any harm? Or, if they're as nuke-proof as everyone says, will it even make a difference?

 

[Wy Renegade]

Personally, I wouldn't worry about it, until you figure out if you have the parasitic or the detrivorous variety. Contrary to popular opinion, the vast majority of leeches are detrivours and thus are completely harmless in an aquarium. Unless you happen to have one of the parasitic varieties, they won't hurt anything, and having something to help clean-up decaying plant material can actually be beneficial.

 

[IanT76]

Ok, well I'll keep my eyes peeled and post a photo here if I see it. I'll press on with the cycle and see what happens - there's not a lot to do here in the desert, so nuking the tank and starting again wouldn't be the end of the world!

 

[jlk]

Do your worms look like this? http://www.americanaquariumproducts.com/images/graphics/detritusworms.jpg

 

[IanT76]

Nope - they're too wormy. I've attached a (poor iPad) drawing of what it looked like; far more oblong in the body area, with a constantly stretching & moving "head" end. Still no sign of it, but I'll keep searching with my camera at the ready...

 

[IanT76]

OK, here he/she/it is...

No sign of it for 2 days, then it pops out of the gravel the second I finish my PWC. About 50% bigger and with lots of little friends!!! The grains of Aquasoil & bits of java moss should indicate a sense of size.

I grabbed the big one with my tweezers, but as soon as I touche it, the little ones abandoned ship and burrowed into the gravel. I went straight in with the GravVac but a good5-6 at least escaped.

Please tell me I do not have to nuke the tank...I just started seeing signs of the cycle kicking in on my test kit tonight! Lol.

 

[jlk]

That is interesting!! Its definitely not a leech. You can distinctly see its legs (or tenacles?). Hopefully, Renegade has some idea because I have never seen anything like this before but I will do some looking around! I honestly would just stick to lots of grav vacs to remove as many as possible. What are you using as your ammonia source?

 

[Wy Renegade]

Are the bristly looking things the small ones, or are they part of the bigger worm?

 

[IanT76]

They're smaller versions of whatever-the-hell-it-is...lol. As soon as I touched the mother ship, they literally leapt off and started swimming/floating away, then as soon as they touched the bottom, burrowed into the aquasoil. Even those tiny ones held onto the glass as I GravVacced them, so they're tough & persistent little buggers....

 

[Wy Renegade]

That is kind of what I figured. I agree with your I.D. as a leech, the question now is are they harmless detritivores or are they the parasitic version. My guess, based on the fact that they are already present, is that they are most likely detritivores. If that is the case, they aren't going to hurt anything, but you will need to decide if the aesthetics of having them present in the tank is good or bad. Are far as getting rid of them, if you decide that is what you want to do or they turn out to be parasitic, I'd look at jlk's thread. If they don't bother you, you can simply continue to remove them with tweezers as they get bigger, but you will likely have a constant population of them present in the tank. If they turn out to detritivores, you maybe able to sell some to those who would like them in a more natural type aquarium - just a thought.

 

[jlk]

This makes my skin crawl.... What type of filtration do you have? I found they love to lay their eggs everywhere but predominantly in the filter housing/media. The eggs look like little football-shaped cases and they are hard as rocks. Check yours for egg cases & scrape them off if you find any. My leeches were distinctly different than yours and did not 'congregate' together so hopefully yours are the non-parasitic type!

 

[IanT76]

Yeah, kinda creeped out myself - not feeling too keen about sticking my hand in there for PCWs, lol! I'm keeping optimistic; given they're already there and seem to be multiplying without a meaty food source, I'm thinking (hoping) they're detritivours. Is there any particular fish that will eat them? I'd like to keep them in check naturally, without chemicals if possible - perhaps some sort of (not happy to say it) sacrificial species that I can put in whilst still completing the cycle?

I found a weird ball/capsule thing the other day and when I grabbed it with the tweezers, it burst - a cloudy substance came out, so perhaps this was the egg that's spurred on this population boom? There seems to be another one in the tank, so Ill fish this out with the net and photo it before dumping.

 

[IanT76]

OK, 20 minutes & one hunt later and I've fished out & destroyed 4 more egg sack/ball things! The wife is seriously unimpressed...

These are about 3-5mm across and difficult to distinguish from the ADA Power Sand substrate, except that they're a lot more spherical with a more regular surface texture. Once squeezed the disgusting ooze comes out very rapidly & sprays quite far; my forearms are now burning with bleach to attest to this fact! The egg case is actually quite tough - basically, they're like tiny lizard/snake/turtle eggs.

Overall, I'm quite concerned how so many fairly obvious things could have got into the tank - just one; fair enough. But half a dozen? I'm thinking these may have come in with the substrate & soil, rather than the plants, as I carefully checked the vegetation & would like to think I would have noticed these.

On a positive (??? grasping at straws ???) note, one of the tiny snails in the tank just crawled past one of tiny leeches withour being devoured, or having it's *** sucked through it's head, so I'm still hoping/praying that these are just crud-eaters and I can manage them with a suitable fish species.

I'll keep updating this post as things do/don't occur, but would appreciate any & all feedback.

 

[IanT76]

Sorry JLK - I've got an external filter but found all these little cases just lying on the soil. I haven't worked up the heart to open the filter yet....

 

[Jess1ca]

OK, here he/she/it is...

No sign of it for 2 days, then it pops out of the gravel the second I finish my PWC. About 50% bigger and with lots of little friends!!! The grains of Aquasoil & bits of java moss should indicate a sense of size.

I grabbed the big one with my tweezers, but as soon as I touche it, the little ones abandoned ship and burrowed into the gravel. I went straight in with the GravVac but a good5-6 at least escaped.

Please tell me I do not have to nuke the tank...I just started seeing signs of the cycle kicking in on my test kit tonight! Lol.

Omg... That is alien-like... I wonder how some levamisole would treat these nasty lil buggers... If all else fails and you had to turn to chems that is. Good luck!!!

 

[jlk]

That is truly bizarre!!! Its worth noting in my leech research that these things reproduce asexually- so, you only needed a single egg or worm to start the population. And you can only kill the adults with meds (or bleach or a bottle of ammonia or anything else)- the eggs are impervious to chemicals, cold, heat, drying, etc and can actually stay dormant for years until conditions are right for them to hatch. A bit scary... Your egg sacs look VERY different than my leech egg sacs- mine were so small I couldnt get a clear pic of them and they were attached to something rather than free floating. The casings they were in reminded me of a beetle's carapace.