assassin snails..anetome helena

[Joby]

One of the first eggs to be laid is in the corner of the tank at the front so I have a pretty good view of it now and can see that the white egg shape is now no longer round and not as prominent so something is changing in there My one worry is that I may inadvertantly syphon the baby ones up having not seen them during tank maintenance hmy:

I've moved a pair to one of my other tanks now and they went straight to work on the snails in there :woohoo:

 

[Doodles]

I have kept my eye on one egg for 2 weeks now. It almost fills up the jello mass. I expect it to be gone within a couple more days. My guess is 2 to 3 weeks tops. I used to see tons of eggs on the roots of my water sprite, then suddenly they were gone and then a few weeks later I found a bunch of very small killers in the sand. They hide for the first few weeks and then come out and when they do they seem to grow pretty quickly. I have yet to remove one to a separate container to really count the time they take to grow. But I would imagine that varies given tank conditions and availablility of prey snails. Are we allowed to post links on this site? I have a really good link for assassins. If I am not allowed to post it here, contact me and I can email it to you.
I used to be a member on a shrimp site were the owner absolutely had a fit if you so much as mentioned a link or another site. I am new here and do not want to start out on a bad foot.

No worries on adding links or mentioning sites that can help with a thread:thumbup:

 

[jerry58]

:hi: joby

Don't know if know but they say assassin snails only reproduce in water above 24 temp and there has to be lots of the other snails to eat,once they are eaten by the assassin snails they will stop reproducing till they find more.

Hope this helps you Jerry

 

[Joby]

Thanks Jerry, my tanks are all at 25 or 26 apart from the Zebra one and an abundance of snails in all of them. Well, apart from the one the 9 have been in for almost 2 weeks and now there are few left so am spreading the assassin love <3:lol:

Its good to know that they will self regulate themselves and not over burden the tanks with babies :yes:

 

[st24rsap]

i have some in a cory tank at 22-23c and there are constantly eggs everywhere, hundreds of them for the last month or so. there are no other snails in the tank

 

[macvsog23]

Thanks Jerry, my tanks are all at 25 or 26 apart from the Zebra one and an abundance of snails in all of them. Well, apart from the one the 9 have been in for almost 2 weeks and now there are few left so am spreading the assassin love <3:lol:

Its good to know that they will self regulate themselves and not over burden the tanks with babies :yes:

Jerry interesting fact on the way this mollusc controls its reproduction.

I believe may organisms do this I do know that most social insects have this hard wired in to them as many relied on a "queen" to produce eggs and the hormones from the "Group" alter the type of Eggs ( Very simple explanation I know its more complexed)

I also belive that some fish will do this.

I have observed this with my assassin snails once they get to around 20 in a tank they stop breeding.In fact I now have almost no Java snails in any of my tanks.

I may set up a feeding tank with just java snails in it and pop a few in every tank each week.

 

[jerry58]

Hi st24rsap

i have some in a cory tank at 22-23c and there are constantly eggs everywhere, hundreds of them for the last month or so. there are no other snails in the tank

The temp of your tanks are to be honest are not that far from 24 when i say that not actually dead 24 as I think every tank has different tamps in different parts of the tank the reading you have is not the over all temp if you see what I mean as in under the gravel,cold ends due to windows droughts from doors hotter round the heater and so on.
Funny they do reproduce with not one snail in your tank?
I have had no luck with reproduction of assassins if no other snails are present.
Maybe they are thriving on the uneaten food you feed the fish and this is a substitute for other snails.

Don't know but I find the assassins eat all the other snails in the tank but not in the filter (I have not put any in manually and they do not colonize by them selves from the tank.
I am running a Eheim pro 3 2080 and the pre filter is full of other snails up to nearly an inch long,I boil and sift them to get rid of them but just come back.
Has anybody got assassins in their filters that reproducing and growing to larger sizes.?
Or do they not fare well in pump media?.
The other snails are not in abundance in the rest of the pump media at all.

Jerry

 

[thegeeman]

I used to have gazillions of MTS in all my tanks but now struggle to find a few. Mind you I now have hundreds of assassins instead. One of my tanks has never seen a snail other than assassins and they are reproducing all the tiime. They love the pink shrimp pellets and will swarm all over one when i drop it in.


Cheers

thegeeman