Leeches! What do I need to do? What can I do?

[KittenFishMom]

After carefully RR-ing all my plants and quarantining my fish I thought I was rid of leeches, but tonight I found one in my big tank. I am just weeks away from taking my tanks down and leaving the hobby for a while. I had most of my fish spoken for and was going to start netting them and distributing them to my friends.  Then tonight, during a water change, I found a rather large leech.

I know RR will kill leeches, but I am not sure RR can kill all the eggs that might be in the water around the plants. Should that water plants be tossed and the rooted ones be planted?

I don't know what to tell my friends about quarantining the fish and snails. I know leeches can hide under snail shells. I know leeches can get into fish gills. Can the fish and snails be successfully quarantined or do they all need to be given clove oil? I have a wide variety of fish now. Everything from a large betta sorority in my 55 gallon tank to little neon tetras and a big school of very busy hillstream loaches. I have dwarf chain loaches and otos and algae eaters. I also have a lot of mystery snails and ramshorn snails. 

I have 4 tanks to take down. I look forward to hearing any advice on how to do this without passing the leeches along to my friends. 

[Guppysnail]

On 2/9/2024 at 11:20 PM, KittenFishMom said:

I know RR will kill leeches, but I am not sure RR can kill all the eggs that might be in the water around the plants. Should that water plants be tossed and the rooted ones be planted?

The plants should have had the water shaken off. If if the seltzer was diluted with water RR will not work.