Strange Creature - can anyone identify what is this?

[KittenFishMom]

I have caught them with this from Amazon.com . I won't catch all of them, but you can get a feel for if the population is getting bigger or smaller over time. I bait mine with fish food or chicken liver. Some fish like to eat leeches. Leeches can hide in water plants or under stones, or in mud or sand. If a leech gets on my skin while I am in the lake, I just pour salt on it and it drops off. Do not pull them off, just put salt on them. Pulling a leech off a living thing that they have bitten can cause damage and or infection. Salt just makes the leech let go quickly. ( Just like the scene in "African Queen".) Lucky for me, the leeches I see here are very small.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09L6HH6BF/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_image?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Edited February 5, 2023 by KittenFishMom

[Fonske]

Yes, snail leech or similar. Had those in my tanks. My apple snails were not happy with them.

At this size the leech has probably multiplied already, keep an eye for tiny leeches (1-2mm or so) on the glass.

Pretty hard to get rid of (even nuking the entire tank+roasting the substrate in an oven didn't help in my case), unless you remove the big one manually and some fish eats all the babies (my bettas and guppies did).