Assassin Eggs - what should I look for as evidence of a hatch?

[fabsroman]

I have seen hundreds of assassin snail eggs laid in my tank since about mid November. However, I have yet to see an assassin baby. I have plenty of feeder snails in the tank. I even bought 10 more assassins and they were feeding just fine the other day and have actually laid some eggs.

It seems as though an egg will be hanging on an anubias root or somewhere else on my anubias or on the heater cords, and then a week or so later, sometimes less than a week, the egg is gone. So far, I have seen a single egg casing that used to have the little dot in it that no longer has the little dot in it, but is still attached to the anubias. Otherwise, all the eggs end up disappearing on me at some point.

Is this normal?

Could something in the tank be eating them? All I have in the tank are the assassins, RCS, MTS. and ramshorns.

Could it be that they are actually hatching but they do not have enough food to survive? I feed shrimp pellets and plenty of other stuff for everybody in the tank. For example, a massivore pellet once or twice a week. Hikari sinking wafers. Shrimp and crab cuisine. Snail jello. Ken's sinking veggie pellets with calcium. Ken's sinking pellets with brine shrimp.

I have no idea what the issue is with these assassins.

 

[DarrylR]

Happens to my tank as well, once the eggs hatch I believe they are SUPER DUPER tiny and hide. Sooner or later about 3-4 months watch at night and see tiny assassin snail babies everywhere.

 

[Krilorn]

If i remember right, it will be quite a long while after the eggs hatch that you will be able to see the lil ones. Like the above post, once hatched they burrow into the substrate and live there for a few months before comming out into the open.

 

[pik01]

i keep mine at about 72F and it took about 4 months after i saw empty pouches for the first baby to make an appearance. 4 months and the little guys were no more than half the diameter of a pencil eraser.

Just to give you a sense of scale that blurry strand of green in the background is java moss and the substrate is eco-complete. I didn't vacuum the gravel for the whole 4 months and for another 3 weeks after i saw this little guy. Drove me nuts lol.

 

[calivivarium1]

If I were you, I would be praying that something is eating some of the eggs...... In a few months you will have more snails than you know what to do with. Just keep doing everything normal and as long as you have baby snails(for the baby assassins to eat) you will be just fine. How long do you see the eggs? In my tank(unheated), eggs last about three weeks in the summer and up to two months in the winter.

 

[sed03f]

these guys will eat up all your snails in no time, I have tanks dedicated to feeding them, its a good thing they are reproducing slowly. What size is the tank and what kind of substrate do you have?

 

[JamesBetts]

Agreed - something is eating them, for sure. I wouldn't worry about it though. You'll want the population kept under control.


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[fabsroman]

Thanks for all the replies guys. I have been seeing eggs since November, but really no babies at all. I started out with 12 assassins, and after finding 10 empty shells and never more than 2 assassins in the tank, I just bought another 10 assassins for the tank. I must have 50 plus eggs in the tank right now with a couple of empty pouches around. Sometimes, before I go to bed I will check the eggs, and in the morning the egg will no longer be on the Anubias root and I am not talking about an empty pouch. I am talking no egg whatsoever.

During the winter, I saw very few empty egg sacks. Now, I have seen about 10 empty sacks and I would guess that it has taken about 2 weeks from the time of laying until they are empty. Still haven't seen any babies yet.

The tank is a 29 gallong with eco-complete in it and a large piece of driftwood.

Sed03F, I have a 10 gallon for breeding MTS, a 20 long for MTS/Ramshorns/Pond Snails, and a 55 gallon for Ramshorns/Pond Snails. I have been dumping in snails whenever I notice that there aren't many ramshorns in the tank, but the MTS population in the tank has pretty much exploded.

I am hoping that I eventually have the same headache that everybody else has with having too many assassin snails on my hands because it sucks not being able to breed them successfully. With that said, I am going to keep at it.

Thanks for all the replies everybody.