Assasin snail behavior

R

Reeyia

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Jul 11, 2009
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I recently added 3 assasin snails to one of my tanks to help take down some pond snails.
The tank has been established for a year or better and all parameters are where they are supposed to be (I checked).
This tank houses chocolate line shrimp (probably really wild Neo's;)) which are breeding like crazy and some seed shrimp which are also breeding like crazy. The assasins have not even tried to bother the shrimp, there is plenty of pond snails for them.
This morning I discovered 2 of them had partially buried themselves in the sand. The sand is deep enough they could have buried completely but they only half buried in.
This is the first time I've had these snails so wondering if this is natural behavior?
 
Yes. My assassins stay buried 24/7 but I know they're still in there because the pond snail shells keep piling up and the surviving pond snails huddle near the top of the tank in fear.
 
Mine don't bury themselves alot because I have gravel. The babies do until they reach a certain size and then they hang out on the top of the gravel or cruise the glass. They will bury themselves completely with just their nose sticking out waiting to grab their prey if they are in sand.
 
This will probably answer 95% of any questions you may have on behavior.... Assassin Snails
 
Excellent article!! And, yes, it did answer this question. Lots of great info so I won't have to ask any more - hopefully!!
Thank you!
 
No problem feel free to ask anything that you feel you need to....
 
Thanks for post that thread. I'm new to the assassin snails also. I got 4 of them to eat my MTS snails and ramshorn that is invading my smaller tanks. I was wondering what kind of bloodworms do you feed them? I have the freezed dryed bloodworms but my other community fish seems to get most of it but I drop in the sinking shrimp pellets at night when I turn off the light for them and I guess that they also eat some of my food I give my other fish in the tank. I make up a mix of tetramin flakes, algae wafers, freezed dryed brine shrimp, bloodworms. I mix all this up in a zip lock bag and put it in a container as this works best for my mixed community tank fish.
 
That depends on your definition of "non-beneficial", a subjective classification at best.

I employ assassins to reduce my pond snail population that competes with shrimp for food in my RCS tank. Obviously, nature agrees that snail populations need to be controlled and therefore came up with the assassin snail. :)
 
pbmax said:
That depends on your definition of "non-beneficial", a subjective classification at best.

I employ assassins to reduce my pond snail population that competes with shrimp for food in my RCS tank. Obviously, nature agrees that snail populations need to be controlled and therefore came up with the assassin snail. :)
Click to expand...

I agree with pbmax on this one. The defination of Beneficial and non benificial are very subjective. If one doesn't want a snail population and does not want to use manual of chemical means for removal then the Assassin is a good choice. Also on the other hand Assassins can be used as a control method if you keep the assassin population low by only using one sex and then they will more or less keep the population in check instead of wiping them out. Even in my tank with 80+ assassins there are a few MTS that have managed to hide either because they are too small to be eaten or they stay burried where I want them to be anyway. There has to be a few adult MTS still in the tank because I will see new babes on occasion that will make a run for the top of the tank.

So to me assassins are very beneficial since they keep the tanks where I do not want a large population of so called pest snails in check. I have been know to move my assassins from tank to tank as populations wane and increase in the pest snail world.

And selling off extra assassins is easy....
 
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