Hi Daniella,

I am not sure of your origin but my friend got some plants from the wild and she got them when she did that. I only stick with purchased plants. I have never had them and I don't want them either. I hope someone else can answer your question better.

hey ponders,
I've got only purchased plants and found a leach too.
RexAnne

Very possible that they could come in on a frog that might have taken a detour through the swamps on the way to your pond. Glenda

thanks for the ideas guys..all my plants were from friend's, and like I said I had cleaned them very well prior to putting them in the ponds. No plants from the wild.
I don't have any frogs, or anything around..though I want them.

ANyone know of they have live young or eggs?

I believe the stork leach drops them off.

If you don't belive that read this:
http://www.fcps.edu/islandcreekes/ecology/freshwater_leech.htm

They lay eggs.

Well, the stork must have dropped them off here..that b@$t@rd, lol. Thanks for the link, but it only told me what I already know, except for the egg part. Maybe the eggs were on a plant, and I just didnt wash the roots off good enough.
thanks

Yes, the eggs often hitch rides on the plants (LOL @ the b@$t@rd stork!!).

Sorry to report, the only way to truly get rid of them is to remove ALL plants from your pond, discard them (YIKES! sends shivers down the spine of a plant-lover like me! LOL), and start over with completely leech/egg-free plants.

Brenda

Brenda,

Seems like a lot of work to rid a pond of an organisim that needs to eat only once or twice a year.

I think it would be cool to have them.

Plants, frogs, birds, animals, fish, etc. etc.

They can come from pretty much anywhere. I've never looked for a pesticide type chemical designed specifically for leaches, but there might be something. You know, like mosquito dunks are for mosquitoes, maybe there's a leach dunk? It would probably be something designed to kill worms.

I wonder if salt would kill them. You can try catching one and put it in a tank and add some pond salt. Do it in measured doses, you know, use exactly 5 gallons of water and try measured doses of salt. Use one leach per 5 gallon bucket and only use that leach for the one dose of salt. If you used one leach and added a tablespoon of salt, but that didn't kill it, it might still weaken it making it die at 2 tablespoons, but a healthy leach might need 3. Get it. So it will be a time consuming experiment, but I'd be very interested in the result.

Good Luck!
Derreck

I agree, Burger! :D Personally, I would leave them, but a) I don't have koi; b) I have a small pond, so c) I don't have to get in it. The info I posted was for the desperate poster who wanted help.

Salt would kill them, however, freshwater plants don't like salt, so Daniella would have to remove every leech and put it in a bucket of salt water, or whatever...IF she wanted to save her pond plants.

Brenda

The plants can take a small dose of salt, that's what the bucket experiment would be for, to see the size of the dose required and if it would be a viable course of action.

well this time i went swimming i had 6 of them on me and it was gross then i burnt them and put salt on them but then this winter i went ice fishing and then we caught fish and there was a bunch of bloodsuckers on them thats what we call them here ..........

My wildlife ponds are full of them. I don't think they came with the waterlilies. I had the waterlilies for years before the leeches showed up. I just make sure I wear my long rubber gloves when I remove dead lily pads.

There are daphnia and little shrimp looking things and beetles that fly underwater in there too. They all just showed up.

I don't worry about the leeches.

I thought that if leeches were in a pond with fish. The fish would eat them. If you put a piece of fresh meat, steak etc on a string and put in the pond the leeches will attack it and you can pull it out and throw away. Repeat proceedure until you catch no leeches. When you see more repeat proceedure. I have not seen any leeches in any of my ponds except the lily pond. Then they were on a frog that had died in there. I took the frog out and I saw something coming out of the frogs side. Thought it was intestines until I realized they were leeches. I put them in a little glass of water and left them on the picnic table to observe them. Well, then the sun dried up all the water and the leeches became leech jerky. End of leeches. Have seen no more.

I agree! Hang a piece of meat, like liver, in the pond and they should attack it. Don't know what to do about any eggs, tho'

EWWWWW!!!! Gross!!! I just recieved a bunch in some friends donation of pond plants!!!YUK! How crappy! Do they really latch onto the fish??!!! There's tons!!! I haven't gotten my pond set up yet, just have all these totes full of plants!(oh, the hurtbaggery!)so may consider scaping everything and getting other plants, hmmm

If you don't have fish in there you should try treating the plants and water with something to kill them. Maybe a triple dose of PP? or something similar.

I read to use Bleach to kill them. You would just need to decide how much bleach to use so that it wouldn't hurt your plants. I would think maybe 2 Tbsp per gallon would not be enough to hurt the plants. Let it sit maybe a couple of hours and then rinse the plants and put into clean water. If you are thinking of chunking the plants and start over, it wouldn't hurt to experiment making the bleach solution a little stronger.

Wouldn't they just be killed off during the winter in NJ? If so, I would just leave them and let nature kill them off.

-Mike

lmao..I was surprised to see this come back up! Pikecoe, I am really lmao @ your experiment and the leech jerky!!

Salt does def kill them, I have used it on them b4. If I flipped a rock and saw one I'd remove it, throw it on the ground and salt it..better than salting a slug! Of course my kids thought I was totally evil for doing it, but hey! let them get their legs sucked on and see if they dont salt the lil SOB's.

I havent seen any this year so far.
Mike, we have leeches all over here in NJ..they arent a foreign thing.
I also learned that leeches can live out of the water, as well as in. Interesting creatures.

Calamity, I wouldnt chuck the plants. I would keep rinsing them off and putting them in new water, till all signs of leeches are gone. As long as they are in totes and there are no fish to worry about, I say use the bleach!!

Pikecoe..I HAVE to ask...what do you mean..'PP'??

Potassium permanganate, which can also kill your fish and every other living thing in the pond....