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Assasin Question

3K views 39 replies 12 participants last post by  mootay 
#1 ·
Someone brought my pet store a couple assasins so I took one home.

He's about 1/2" - question is, I just put a bunch of MTS in and I don't want him to kill them all. Will he do much damage since he's so small? I haven't dropped him in yet. He's pretty!

I'm sure most of the MTS are buried so I should be ok with one assasin, right?

Thanks!
 
#36 ·
I bought four of them, because I had an infestation of pond snails in my new 75g tank... From my first plant order. I had around 50-75 pond snails when I put them in. Within a week I swear I was down to around 30, the differnce was dramatic. They reduced the population down to around 10 or so within two weeks. I thought they ate them all, but then I seen them again. The Assasin snails seemed to either of hid until more food came out or were killed by something. Because I can only find one assasin snail, and the pond snails are picking up steam again. I have a few pond snails that seem to be able to elude them, and go undetected. Unfortunately they are the same ones that seem to want to only eat repens... I will drop them by the assasin and he will go the other way. He will not eat them.

He may not be feeling well because of the Excel I'm dosing. They dont seem to like it, as I've noticed them acting different/dying.
 
#37 ·
So I just checked another tank I have that I had thrown some plants in half a year ago. There's actually medium-sized assassin snails lurking around, so they must've hatched from those plants back then. Now I'm wondering why those eggs successfully hatched in that tank and not in the one the plants originally came from? Both tanks have guppies, a plethora of live snails, and gravel. The original tank has a bunch of scuds in there too.
 
#40 ·
I kept 4 assassin snail adults in a tank inundated with ramshorn snails. I would see an empty shell here and there for months until suddenly, there were baby assassin snails roaming about. At this stage my ramshorns completely disappeared within a week.

I would imagine one by itself would do very little harm and it will not reproduce on it's own. Add a mating pair however, and it's only a matter of time before the MTS are gone and the assassins are all you see. Unfortunately, while assassin snails are obviously much smarter than pond/ramshorn/trumpet snails and far more interesting to watch, they are not good at aerating the substrate, scouring the tank walls for algae, eating dead plant matter and eating deceased fauna(though the meatier stuff will be eaten if fresh). If you add more and you're uncertain of the sex(I don't know how to sex them, for the record) then be prepared to keep a very watchful eye on the assassin snail population.
 
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