What Exactly Is My Assasin Snail Meant To Be Doing?

[David J]

Just to let you know, I gt an email from the seller of my assassins. He states that they can take about 5 days or so to properly acclimatise and that during this period they will most likely sit still and that many people think they've died. It says that once they have properly settled they will get to work.

 

[This Old Spouse]

That's about right. I think it took mine about a week to get their groove on.

 

[Gilli]

so I presume they would be no good for malaysian trumpet snails then if they need to get inside?

Just their proboscis needs to get inside, not the whole snail.

Yeah I realise that - but Malaysian trumpet snails are small and very narrow can assassins deal with them?

 

[This Old Spouse]

The smaller ones can. I have (had) both types of pest snails in my tank and all I ever see any more are the empty shells, all sizes.

 

[Aviici]

Yeah they can get rid of all different sized snails, after rearranging my little tank today I found empty shells the size of a grain of rice, and no pest snails are left alive at all, then empty shells in the 200l the same size as the assassin snails themselves! these guys are awesome

 

[David J]

Well, my 3 assassins have been in for 3 days now. 2 of them lay upside down and didn't move for about a day but the biggest one went on the move right away. The next morning I found an empty pond snail shell. Then the other 2 started moving around and gradually I've found about 10 empty shells. I saw a glowlight tetra picking about at one of the empty shells and eventually a left over bit of dead snail came out of the shell and it started eating it.

 

[Ruskull]

I like your avatar David, I'm a big fan of Lemon Tetras.

 

[dougie]

Just out of interest, what will the assassins eat when they've taken care of all the pest snails?

 

[the_lock_man]

Leftover fish food.
 
When I had gazilions of them in my tank, it was hilarious watching all the assassins darting towards the catfish wafers, and the cories shovelling them out of the way.

 

[lilruthc]

I have a small army of assassins - havent seen a pest snail in months as a result! (but have just hoovered up a number of pest snail shells, so I can see they are doing their job!)