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The little guys are in a pretty empty tank so that I can keep an eye on em (there's one baby that I know of in the driftwood jungle but there's not much I can do about that besides catch them if I happen to find them swimming) and they've all made a leech cuddle puddle for safety
I'm so happy they look so healthy!!! I was worried since I think a week was still too soon to be handling them after they had eaten and they got some really concerning indigestion. I'm going to move the handling after eating info in my guide up by a week and see if it doesn't go better. I have a very active snail infestation but they're not harming anything and the bio load in the tank is still pretty low. I may just pop some more plants in there, do a larger water change to make sure that the nitrates aren't building up, and see if it doesn't balance out.
But hey- clean glass
On the mating process of leeches.
In the case of Hirudo Verbana, mating takes place in the water. Each of the pair will grab onto the other, usually with one leech initiating by giving the other leech "Love Bites", with each leech lining up facing the other and "hugging"
These love bites may look like an attack at first, but the initiating leech will suction it's anterior sucker somewhere along the middle of the other leech, not causing any visible penetrative wound. This allows the leeches to properly line up and press together their sexual organs despite being underwater.
Notably, a leech that doesn't want to mate will reject another leech by dodging attempts to suction on, or weaving in complicated ways to keep their sexual organs from lining up properly until they can eventually escape.
That is to say, my tank is currently full of leech spooge
It's rare that I can get such a clear image of their back patterns. Squonch is livin up to the name and has almost a lace or checkerboard pattern!
I'll try and document Squinch's as well, and will see if that checker board holds true. Would be interesting to eventually breed for clearer patterns or colors, but that's a pipe dream at the moment. The yellow to orange coloration deeper in its pattern and the subtle green coloration with black striping is also beautiful.
"Why don't we buy our leeches from Leech.com?" You ask. "It seems so easy, isn't it legit?" You question.
X
And as you can see I have leeches everywhere.
Holy fuck you guys!!!!
We now have defined proof (I'm pretty sure) that leeches shouldn't be kept solely aquatic to prevent them from breeding.
Picture is of an article detailing an experiment where leeches in a control group were allowed to breed and deposit eggs naturally, and leeches in the experimental group that had their breedings delayed by being kept aquatically had significant offspring mutation or death in addition to death of the experimental group leeches, sometimes before even being able to deposit cocoons. I have to read through the entire article to verify, and this is just a small group, but this could be PROOF that you should have land area for your Verbana leeches at the very least. Exciting!!!
Leech Diary: Moss
I'm about 90% sure the christmas moss in my tank for a couple of reasons.
1. My tank is pretty dark most of the time
2. The water is cold as hell
3. It's brown.
I'm gonna try java moss instead for it's low temp, low light requirements and get a little moss for the logs and see how that pans out
Long boy stretched out to 7 whole inches!!
