Leeches in our pond what do we do?

Question

recently all our fish died in our pond while we were on vacation and we r taking this time to fix up the pond. when we took out the turtle my dad noticed he had leeches on his stomach and after walking in the pond for a few min he had them on his feet. our pond doesnt have mud in it the bottom of the pond is the pond liner and the sides are rocks. should we chemically treat our pond right now since it has no life in it or are the leeches not that big of a deal because they are small. I was reading and found that a lot of smaller leeches dont attach on to the fish because the fish eat them but they had no problem attaching to the turtle. so do we kill them or not?

carl r · Accepted Answer

I would empty the whole thing, clear it out, put in new plants and use a potassium permanganate treatment - or three.  I just looked some up on google and there are variations.  We have a formula we use which is a hybrid of the ones on the web and it's primarily used on fish and overloaded organic material.  One thing to keep in mind in this methodology, is that the permanganate is only active when it's pink.  Once it changes to brown, it's spent.  This could be 20 minutes or 2 hours. - it needs 2 hours of pinkness to do its job. Bio filter off, aeration on - 2-3 applications a day
 When we treat a pond, we keep track of how long it's pink, then reverse it with peroxide.  Then we do it again, all the while we're timing it, since the early applications are primarily cooking off any organic materials, not leaving enough dwell time to ger to the fill flukes or other parasites
Check google for variations.
One person listed malathion as a remedy but cautioned about it's toxicity.  That's a head scratcher, as malathion has low mammalian toxicity andd you can buy it anywyere for your veggies.  They may have it confused with parathion

Kenneth · Answer

There are chemicals that will kill them...But you can't put anything in thev pond fro about 3 months and it is possible you may need to treat the pond more than once....Can't think of the chemical name right but think we got it at a feed store

? · Answer

I even have located quite a few rocks and flowers into my pond from the river and now I even have leaches and a few different critters that hitched a trip. I even got here upon a infant snapping turtle with reference to the dimensions of a 50 cent piece that unquestionably took me with the help of marvel.

meanolmaw · Answer

tie a chunk of raw liver to a cord and drop it into the water.... leave it there overnight.... next day, pull it out and kill what leeches you find there..... put the liver back...... keep this up until you don't find any more leeches.....freshen the liver as necessary.....to be a little less gross, try it this way....

http://www.squidoo.com/how-to-remove-leeches-from-your-pond-without-chemicals

? · Answer

Drain the pond. Fill it with gas. Light it a fire! Should work.

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Leeches in our pond what do we do?

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