Hirudinaria manillensis(Asian Leech) eats plankton. Is it zooplankton or phytoplankton or both?

Question

Hirudinaria manillensis(Asian Leech) eats plankton. Is it zooplankton or phytoplankton or both?

Answer 1

Both, as well as bacteria and other microbes.  Aeromonas is found in this leech.  This species is being adapted for medicinal use as well.

http://lib.bioinfo.pl/pmid:8182569

Answer 2

Asian leech does not sorely diet on plankton. A blood meal may also help it. If they do eat plankton, filtering selectively would be hard for the leech. In other words, it would be almost impossible to eat only one kind, because the plankton are hard to filter out by kind. Although some leeches are bloodsuckers, a few are just are predators that can live 3 months without a meal. If you plan on keeping them, tubifex worms and black worms are really good