I was wearing rubber boots (almost, but not quite as high as the water
level) as there was a lot of crap on the bottom and I didn't want to step
on it. When I got out of the pond about 15-20 minutes later, I had three
small (1-2 inches long) reddish worms attached to my boot by their mouths.
Two took a little effort to pry loose, but one had actually imbedded its
teeth or sucker or whatever into the rubber and was well affixed to it.
That was frightening! Are these blood sucking leeches or some similar
creature? What can I do to get rid of them? I have two dogs who have the
run of the yard, and I certainly don't want to poison the water in any way
in case they sip from it unsupervised. Could they have attached themselves
to my leg? Thanks in advance for any tips on what I found, or what found
me in the pond. Alan

A simple way to test it, is to take an old plastic soda bottle, and put a
few chunks of liver in it. If after a few hours, you find leeches in the
bottle, you've got a problem.

Otherwise they're probably the kind of leeches that eat pond muck.

You can use the liver in a soda bottle trick to trap and remove the leeches
from the pond.

And I would add/clarify that needs to be fresh raw liver.

The best solution is salt. It is nontoxic to your dogs, and for a short
duration won't hurt most water plants. A level of 2.5 pounds per 100
gallons is effective. If your plants haven't woken up (started growing) it
won't hurt them. Unpotted plants, WH, anacharis should be removed.
Leave salt in for 1 week, remove 50% of water an add new. Continue to do
this once/week for 4-5 times to remove the majority of the salt... or
better, do it in one swoop. Salt the pond, wait a week, empty, clean bottom
with shop vac, refill. After several weeks do the liver trick again.

Or, you could do the drain/clean/fill and retest and see if you didn't get
the worst of the problem.

Or... you could continue to walk thru the pond daily and kill what attaches
to you. ;o) ~ jan
--------------
See my ponds and filter design:
www.jjspond.us

~Keep 'em Wet!~
Tri-Cities WA Zone 7a
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