Leaches in pond???

I cleaned out my parents pond today and when I got out I noticed about 100
little worms on my feet. But they really turned out to be leaches. We don't
know where they came from. Would they have come from an infected fish or
plants?

Anyway I remember seeing something about removing leaches by baiting them
with chicken liver??? Is this right? Any info would be greatly
appreciated!!!

On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 00:10:02 -0500, "EJ" Merlin19771 no spam !!! @charter.net wrote:

I cleaned out my parents pond today and when I got out I noticed about 100
little worms on my feet. But they really turned out to be leaches. We don't
know where they came from. Would they have come from an infected fish or
plants?

Anyway I remember seeing something about removing leaches by baiting them
with chicken liver??? Is this right? Any info would be greatly
appreciated!!!

That's right, but it sounds like you did the bare legged stroll, which
obviously is also highly effective. Ewwww ~ jan

See my ponds and filter design:
http://users.owt.com/jjspond/

~Keep 'em Wet!~
Tri-Cities WA Zone 7a
To e-mail see website

not all leeches are eat humans.
You can test a leech with a piece of
liver, if he likes it you'll want to get rid
of them. If he doesn't then he is a scavenger
leech and eats dead plants, dead animals and
fish poo. yum! ;-)

k30a

mmmm fishpoo

"K30a" wrote in message
...
not all leeches are eat humans.
You can test a leech with a piece of
liver, if he likes it you'll want to get rid
of them. If he doesn't then he is a scavenger
leech and eats dead plants, dead animals and
fish poo. yum! ;-)

k30a

They defiantly like humans!!! There were atleast 100 small leaches attached
to my feet and lower legs. Talk about a nasty feeling. BTW They were all
very small.

EJ wrote They defiantly like humans!!! There were atleast 100 small leaches
attached
to my feet and lower legs.

Oh, dear!!!
Here is one way I've heard about to catch leeches in a pond.
Take two strawberry type baskets, the kind that berries come in at the grocery
store. Put in a piece of liver, attach the baskets to each other and you have a
trap which fish should not be able to get to.
Suspend the trap in the pond overnight and in the morning you should have lots
of leeches in the basket. Repeat.
Leeches lay eggs in the muddy bottom of the pond. You may have to keep
repeating the trap until all are caught of the new generation.
Or, depending on the size of the pond you may want to empty it and get any muck
out that is in there.
You orginally found them in the filter? Maybe, hopefully, they are confined in
there.
Let us know what happens!
I'm traveling tomorrow but I'll be anxious for updates.
Good luck!!!

k30a

"EJ" Merlin19771 no spam !!! @charter.net wrote in message
...
They defiantly like humans!!! There were atleast 100 small leaches
attached
to my feet and lower legs. Talk about a nasty feeling. BTW They were all
very small.


On the brigher side, I bet you have a lot less demons in you now.

BV.

The pond is about 1200 gallons The contractor lined the bottom of the pond
with pea gravel and its about 2 years old so there is defiantly some
sediment in there also. I originally got it the pond (my first time in by
the way) to take a close up of a stunning green smoke that I bought from
Bonnie earlier this year!! And while I was in there I decided to clear out
all the dead pads and fertilize everything. I was in the pond for about 30
min. I noticed that the fish were nibbling at my feet almost right away (the
pond is overstocked at least 30 assorted goldfish - some 8" to 10") the
weird thing was that they only were nibbling at my toes.

After 10 min or so of being out of the pond I keep feeling something move on
the top of my foot. When I looked down I noticed that both of my feet were
covered in what I thought were slug/worms. And when I tried to brush them
off they didn't come off. So then I went to the hose and ran water over my
feet while I rubbed my feet. And they all came right off. The largest wasn't
quite 1/2" long and some weren't much longer than a couple of grains of rice
laid end to end.

I think I will take a 2 liter coke bottle and make a trap for them. I will
cut the head off and turn it back inside. Hopefully they will go in
......they shouldn't be able to get back out. And then I guess I will have
to change out the bait every couple of days or so.

My Mom has gotten in every month or so to fertilize and this is the first
time she has ever seen them.

I haven't been able to find much info on the net regarding killing them. I
kinda wondered about salt. I know I cant go much above a 2% solution without
worrying about some of our plants. This is our display pond!!! So the plants
are a big concern. It has everything from Green Smoke to Mickey Mouse Taro
in it.

K30a- "Are there any fish in the display pond?"

Yep.........

"I noticed that the fish were nibbling at my feet almost right away (the
pond is overstocked at least 30 assorted goldfish - some 8" to 10") the
weird thing was that they only were nibbling at my toes."

I am only going to try pond salt as my last resort! I will experiment with
some trap Ideas and see how it goes.

In the mean time I guess its time to invest in some wading boots....LOL

Are you feeding the fish? If so you ought to cut them off, tell them to get a
job and get busy and eat those
leeches.

I did a search on potassium permaganate and leeches and found Roark's page
http://www.arborman.com/pproarky.htm
titled
The Ultimate Potassium Permanganate FAQ
and found this, which I edited a bit to take out Roark's unreasonable attitude
towards plants which is a whole 'nother story...

Is It Dangerous To My Plants?
--No--. In fact, plants appreciate the manganese. As long as you don’t use
the raw, undiluted powder directly on them -----, they won’t mind a bit. Make
a mental note that 20 ppm to 40 ppm of KMnO4 in cool water makes a great bath
for incoming plants to kill snails, leeches, and other nasties. Simply submerge
the entire plant in this solution, add a powerhead, airstone or recirc pump to
provide circulation and avoid dead spots.. then wait 6 hours. After this,
hose-off the plants and they’re ready for the pond. This treatment kills
snails, bugs and parasites without causing any damage to the plant.

Look for more info about treating the whole pond. I keyed in the word leeches
and found the above stuff.

IF you look into this you HAVE to read the ENTIRE page, because if you don't
know already, PP is nasty, nasty stuff if you
don't know what you are doing and can cause much damage to humans.

Let us know what happens!
k30a