oh no assassin multiplication :-(

well mine are breeding and are doing well, we do live in a very hard water area so that may help.

decided against loaches...for now, will wait and see how many snail si end up with and go from there.
 
Well this is a shock to me, I went to my LFS to pick up some "feeder" snails and see baby assassins in the 7ph> tank. And I still don't have any baby's, ugh.
 
sorry for bringing up an old thread, but has anyone been able to determine between male and female assassin snails?

ive noticed lately alot of my assassin snails will get together into this massive mound i guess they are getting "busy"... some of my snails got brown stripes whereas others have more darker near black stripes. i doubt thats an indicator of gender, but who knows....

any ideas?
 
Lachette said:
sorry for bringing up an old thread, but has anyone been able to determine between male and female assassin snails?

ive noticed lately alot of my assassin snails will get together into this massive mound i guess they are getting "busy"... some of my snails got brown stripes whereas others have more darker near black stripes. i doubt thats an indicator of gender, but who knows....

any ideas?
Click to expand...

For me I've well at least determined sex for my guys by stripe sizes. Females have bigger yellow stripes, where as males have smaller yellow stripes. Just my two cents though probably isn't true. Also I have to report i have babies finally.
 
you got pics of that? mine kinda look the same but thats porportinal to their shell size.

congrats on the babies btw. soon you will have more than you will know to do with cept to sell them off.


oh. My snails will eat each other if they are desperate. found that out when i was on vacation for 2 weeks and somehow they manaaged to eat thru 100 or so pond snails i got from the LFS...
 
Missed this one in my time that I was off doing other things...

The Assassins will not wipe out all the MTS no matter how many there are in the tank. I had a 29 with over 80 assassins for over 1.5 years and as soon as I removed the assassins the MTS resurfaced and started wandering around. In 180 gallon it would take years to even get it close to the point where you would not still see MTS on the surface. MTS will out breed assassins 1000 fold.

Assassin survival rate for the average person is less than 50% to get them to adulthood. Very few people I know actually have really good survival rates due to quite a few factors. My survival rate is up in the 80% range but I have to do quite a few special things to get it there.

I think it was my article you read....
 
You can determine the sex of the assassin snails by the stripes. The larger stripes and wider is the females and they are bigger in size over the males. The males are thinner stripes and are smaller. I have 8 assassin snails in my 55 gal. tank to control the #'s of MTS snails. The assassin snails do a good job in keeping the MTS numbers down. The MTS snails are not a problem with my live plants I just have alot of tiny ones crawling in my sand. I think that the Assassin snails are really pretty with their brown and yellow stripe spiral shells. If you get so many of them sell them to a local fish store. People want them for the snail control and http://www.Aquabid.com The Assassin snails sell for a really high price just for a few of them. I ordered some Earthworm sticks from http://www.kensfish.com I was told that if they run out of snails to eat they like this. They need protein food to survive but can survive of the fish food you feed your reg. fish.
 
EileenH said:
You can determine the sex of the assassin snails by the stripes. The larger stripes and wider is the females and they are bigger in size over the males. The males are thinner stripes and are smaller. I have 8 assassin snails in my 55 gal. tank to control the #'s of MTS snails. The assassin snails do a good job in keeping the MTS numbers down. The MTS snails are not a problem with my live plants I just have alot of tiny ones crawling in my sand. I think that the Assassin snails are really pretty with their brown and yellow stripe spiral shells. If you get so many of them sell them to a local fish store. People want them for the snail control and http://www.Aquabid.com The Assassin snails sell for a really high price just for a few of them. I ordered some Earthworm sticks from http://www.kensfish.com I was told that if they run out of snails to eat they like this. They need protein food to survive but can survive of the fish food you feed your reg. fish.
Click to expand...

You can not count on the stripes as a way to determine sex. It is a good indicator but is not a set way to do it. I will say that 60% of the time the stripe theory will hold up but I have some with larger stripes that are males. Size is usually a better indicator, but this is only possible in larger fully mature snails. As far as feeding them they will eat any meaty foods like bloodworms and frozen shrimp. Most of your normal fish foods are high in fish meal so the protein count is way up and can be used to keep them alive but the breeding goes way down so the earthworm sticks area good choice.

ive noticed lately alot of my assassin snails will get together into this massive mound i guess they are getting "busy"...
Click to expand...

Assassins usually pair up and a large mound does not indicate mating but more than likely feeding.
 
Plenty of other loaches eat snails too. Pretty much any of the "Botia" group which includes Clown Loaches, Botia histrionica (Burmese Loach), Botia rostrata (Sergeant Major Loach), Botia dario (Queen Loach), Botia kubotai (Burmese Border Loach), etc.

There is no way to "control" MTS. Loaches will get most of them though but if you pull them out you will be quickly overwhelmed again. You will only rarely see them after your loaches have them in control. Assassins may very well eradicate them given enough time. Assassins are just like any snail - give them a good food source they reproduce like mad.

Bottom line on snails is they are worse then rabbits. MTS are the worst of all.
 
if you dont want the babies than send them to me. ill pay shipping and id be more than happy to relieve you of your "burden"
 
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