I will happily feed these little leeches to fish, but usually by hand and one by one, as I don’t want to risk one escaping and laying eggs. I’m trying to culture the blackworms and when I have to buy new ones, I make sure to take out all the leeches when I’m rinsing them and sorting out the dead ones. These guys show up all the time with the California Blackworms I buy to feed to my fish. It’s usually not a problem to pour out the worms and have the leeches stay put where I can swipe them off and drop them where I want them. If not, they’re alive and usually, tightly stuck to the surface of the container they are in. It’s easy to tell which leeches are alive and which are not. This species, which I have no proper ID for, has so far proved to be harmless and I’ve had them for years now ( as of 2019). I’ve only had personal experience with one very small leech species, the one shown in the images at the start of this blog. If you find a leech in your aquarium, it’s best to remove it right away, not so much so it won’t attack your fish or frog, but so it won’t have a chance to lay eggs. But most of them perform beneficial roles, helping to control insect pests, like mosquito larvae! Humans, for the most part, tend to be afraid of leeches, because we think they are all blood-sucking parasites. They are very small and look to be near black in colour when you see them. These are the tiny leeches that sometimes show up with Tylomelania snails. Problem is, anything that would kill the leech is liable to kill your snail as well. While the snails generally seem able to deal with these parasites, we find it objectionable, probably because we can see them, and let’s face it, it looks like they are sucking blood from our snails. One small leech species is known to appear along with the popular Tylomelania, or Rabbit snails. ![]() So even those gross and rather horrifying blood-sucking leeches that most of us fear have rendered us some very valuable services. Microsurgeons must love their leeches since their use can make the difference between success and failure with such delicate surgeries. ![]() This is what makes the medicinal leech so valuable for microsurgeries, such as reattaching fingers or noses. Your main problem will be dressing the wound, which may bleed for up to ten hours, because of the incredible anticoagulant they inject as well. If you let them finish up, they’ll let go. But leeches do not carry any diseases and their bite is painless, thanks to their very effective anesthetic, which they inject at the moment of the bite. In Europe though, there are several species that will take human blood. In nature, it’s not usually a big deal for the frog, but in a tank, where the leech has no other prey choices, it might be.Īs for humans, in North America, only one species of leech actually preys on humans. If you do keep frogs, then I would probably worry a bit, because if it is a blood-sucking species it might do a lot of harm to the frog. ![]() Though frogs are most often the preferred prey for some of the blood-sucking species, turtles are also affected and at least one species is known to parasitize some snails. Most of them prey on various insect larvae, worms or other small creatures and just eat them. So their reputation as evil bloodsuckers is mostly mythical. Some species of leech can feed on fish, but most of the time, fish tend not to be their preferred prey.Īnd of the 700 odd species of leech worldwide, only a tiny percentage of them actually feed on blood. But I don’t think they’re nearly as bad as most people think they must be. I’d only be concerned if I saw one attached to a fish or a frog or my Tylo snail pet. They’re inverts, one of the flatworms, and for the most part, they’re not particularly harmful. That ’shrink up’ response is not seen in too many other creatures. If you find a wormy looking beastie, and when you touch it, it shrinks up into a much smaller ball, or you can see it has a sucker mouth, and it can also stretch out to be quite long and slender, then it pretty much has to be a leech of some kind. Btw, that’s a ramshorn snail on the left. In this shot, they are stretched out long and narrow, but you can see one holding on with the mouth end and starting to contract to move forward. Small harmless leeches, on an Anubias leaf, from my snail culture tank.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |