Assassin Snail behavior

smbjedi

smbjedi

May the fish be with you.
Dec 20, 2006
343
0
16
Dallas, TX
I have a heavily planted tank and dropped a few sins in there to eat my mts. I didnt see them for months, but i would see empty mts shells. For really no reason I dropped 4 or 5 ramhorns in the tank and within 30 mins all three sins were front and center stalking the rams! Has anyone else seen this? How did they know they were in the tank? Like I said I havent seen any of them in months.
 
I wish I could tell you. I have 6 assassins in a 5.5 gal with MTS, ramshorn, and pond snails and I have only seen 2 ramshorn shells and a couple of MTS shells over the last 4 weeks.
 
Smell perhaps? If food is not abundant in my assassin tank, I can immediately draw all my assassin snails out of hiding by dropping either algae pellets or feeder snails into the tank.
 
I dropped in bloodworms and all the baby sin snails swarmed to the front where they were dropped, and the baby sin snails were VERY elusive never seen more than one at one time.
 
Notice the trunk or rather long snout they wave around? That's what they used to smell their prey although mine appeared to have been confused a few times when I poured over 50 MTS.
 
They can smell the food snails and will come out of hiding. Rams are one of their favorite foods.....

I have over 80 and never see more than 20 or so at a time.
 
at first i didnt think my sins were eating any snails either. then i was cleaning and moved a piece of drift wood. found about 50-75 juvi ramshorn shells underneath it, like a graveyard to hide the bones. they leave my mts alone which sucks. i hate pesky snails. my sins also burry themselves in the sand. only time i see them is when i turn the lights durring off hrs
 
Mine mostly hide, but i do see lots off empty shells everywhere. The weird thing is when i put in an algae wafer the assassins appear and eat the wafer with the other snails, in harmony. The murderous rampage is when the lights are out, I guess.
 
So I bought baby assassin snails about 3 weeks ago and I haven't seen them since. They were going! Like sesame seed sized. Is this normal???
 
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