Hello,

I bought 3 assassin snails to clear my 70l tank of nuisance snails brought in on plants, etc. I was told these wouldn't breed so i wouldn't be replacing one problem with another.

That was a few months ago and now i have more assassin snails than i can count - last count was more than 30! Do i need to factor them in when thinking about stocking levels and are there any other issues i should be aware about having this many snails in my tank?

I try to remove as many as i can when doing water changes and regular maintenance, but it's a losing battle. If they're not going to cause problems then i'm happy to keep them as i find them interesting additions and my son loves them.

Thanks
Doors

They won't be doing any harm, but a population explosion would suggest that you may be overfeeding your fish.

JON

I have something of the thread wanted to ask.
How do you breed so many of them??? Adult assassin snail in my country is kinda expensive. If I could breed those snail like that, I can sell them with cheap price to my friends who are having problem with snails

As long as you have a male and a female they will breed. Buy a few (they're impossible to sex, I bought two and managed to get one male and one female, but you might not be so lucky), drop pest snails that you pull out of your other tanks whenever you find them (they'll hunt them down over time), and a small pinch of bloodworm every so often.

Mine happily breed on their own in my small tank, but if you wanted a dedicated setup to breed them then a small tank (size shouldn't matter too much tbh) with a centimetre or two of sand substrate, and an air-powered sponge filter, and collect the new snails as they appear. A bunch or two of elodea or hornwort will feed the pest snails a bit, but you'll want to be able to get into the substrate easily to harvest them for your friends, so dense planting is to be avoided.

Can I feed them anything other than blood worm?

Oh yes, they'll eat flake food too, but they prefer meaty foods. They might well grow and reproduce better on that sort of diet than on what they'd get as part of your "clean-up crew".

It's just not easy to buy bloodworm here, what about tubiflex?

Do I need a real fish tank to keep them or just anything big enough and can hold water?

By the way, do I need a cycled tank and a filter?

Tubifex should be fine. Any wormy (or snaily) live food that wriggles around on the bottom of the tank will be OK.

Any large food-safe container will be fine. If they're big enough you can keep fish in them- we regularly recommend 80L+ boxes for people who've bought themselves a 12L deathbox and a goldfish as an interim measure. I only suggested a "proper" aquarium with some plants (maybe some shrimp, etc) if you were going to have the tank somewhere readily visible.

I'd always recommend a filter. I really don't know how snails respond to nitrite or ammonia, but I can't think it'd be good for them. An instant cycle shouldn't be too difficult, either leave your new sponges in the filter of one of your existing tanks for a couple of weeks, or steal a bit of the sponge/ceramic noodles from one and set everything up immediately.

Thanks alot! You just gave me an idea =D

I will set up a shrimp/snail tank! I have an empty 60l with a very classic, old style filter (Don't know what to call that one).

I still don't know how to transfer media. for example, I have a sponge filter, And if i'm going to use something like a canister filter, I'm just gonna take a pinch of the sponge and put it into the canister?