ShrimplyTheBest
New Member
I'm not sure what the most appropriate sub forum is; mods feel free to move it if necessary.
I caught this bugger in my new 20 gallon setup. Been doing a fishless cycle on it for about 3 weeks now. I order some plants from DustinsFishTanks. I knew there was risk of living things coming in on the plants and I was ok with that (although I was thinking pest snails were the only likely thing). Turns out there were bladder snails, and I'm pretty sure I've seen a couple ramshorns (those are almost too tiny to tell at this point), and also this creepy thing.
This is the only one I've seen in the tank. I saw it stick out of the substrate, and then come out briefly to slink around like a worm before burrowing back into the substrate. Today I found it crawling around on the glass, it looked like it was trying to escape the aquarium! I caught him in a net and put him in a glass jar to ID him.
It's about 2 inches long when stretched out, but compresses to be significantly shorter. When it's stretched out it looks like a small earthworm. It can free swim through the water, although it looks erratic, but it appears to be able to navigate that way. When it crawls on a surface it looks like a slinky - the head stretches forward and attaches, then the rest of it slinks up, and it does it again to move forward. The end that is attaching to the glass appears very adept at maintaining grip, even through very turbulent water while I swirl the jar. I am unable to see any kind of detail beyond what you can see in the picture.
Am I correct in my identification that this is a leech?
There is no livestock in the tank so I'm not sure what it's been surviving on. There are probably 50 bladder snails, but most are still super tiny and I haven't seen the leech interact with any of them. Could it be a detritus variety of leech that just eats rotting stuff rather than preying on live animals?
Is this something I need to worry about?
I caught this bugger in my new 20 gallon setup. Been doing a fishless cycle on it for about 3 weeks now. I order some plants from DustinsFishTanks. I knew there was risk of living things coming in on the plants and I was ok with that (although I was thinking pest snails were the only likely thing). Turns out there were bladder snails, and I'm pretty sure I've seen a couple ramshorns (those are almost too tiny to tell at this point), and also this creepy thing.
This is the only one I've seen in the tank. I saw it stick out of the substrate, and then come out briefly to slink around like a worm before burrowing back into the substrate. Today I found it crawling around on the glass, it looked like it was trying to escape the aquarium! I caught him in a net and put him in a glass jar to ID him.
It's about 2 inches long when stretched out, but compresses to be significantly shorter. When it's stretched out it looks like a small earthworm. It can free swim through the water, although it looks erratic, but it appears to be able to navigate that way. When it crawls on a surface it looks like a slinky - the head stretches forward and attaches, then the rest of it slinks up, and it does it again to move forward. The end that is attaching to the glass appears very adept at maintaining grip, even through very turbulent water while I swirl the jar. I am unable to see any kind of detail beyond what you can see in the picture.
Am I correct in my identification that this is a leech?
There is no livestock in the tank so I'm not sure what it's been surviving on. There are probably 50 bladder snails, but most are still super tiny and I haven't seen the leech interact with any of them. Could it be a detritus variety of leech that just eats rotting stuff rather than preying on live animals?
Is this something I need to worry about?
