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Mini ramshorns and Assasin snails


Lennie
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As I am requested to breed assasin snails by my LFS,

I decided to get a small group and thought introducing them to the tub where I have many mini ramshorns might be the best idea.

But... is it?

 

I keep reading different opinions on whether they eat mini ramshorns or not. Some say adults ignore mini ramshorns due to their size, some say baby assasins may hunt them down but not adults. Some say they all do. Some say they never touch them, meanwhile someone else say they literally cleaned them all.

I am very confused.

 

What's your experience like?

 

Should I let them do their job and expect to feed on them, or should I feed them meaty pellets/foods?

Assassin Snails - Flip Aquatics

Edited by Lennie
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On 5/26/2023 at 10:14 PM, Guppysnail said:

I would feed light in case they did not but watch and see if they do. 

Should I expect them to go sleep mode so I know they are not hungry, orr?

It is very hard to track mini ramshorn population and shells, as it is a tub >_> and sides are blurry

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On 5/26/2023 at 3:37 PM, Lennie said:

Should I expect them to go sleep mode so I know they are not hungry, orr?

It is very hard to track mini ramshorn population and shells, as it is a tub >_> and sides are blurry

Mine burrow under the substrate when not active. Sometimes I see the tip of the point sticking up. 

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@Lennie You're not going to like what I have to say, but I won't let that stop me from saying it. And it's meant to be helpful, truly. 🙂 

1. Assassins take a long time to breed to sellable size, like 4-6 months at least. When you get down to #s 9 & 10 below, you'll see why waiting 9-12 months to start selling might be a better idea.

2. Assassins are huge eaters. If all they eat is snails, you need a huge prey population to sustain them, especially if you want them to breed prolifically (breeding includes well-conditioned adults capable of laying lots of eggs, and large amounts of food available for assassins of all sizes, from basically invisible babies to 1/4" juvies to adult size). 

3. I bred a ton of assassins in a 10 gallon tank that I originally set up to make regular ramshorns, which I had a buyer for at the time. My buyer stopped buying, so I converted my ramshorn farm into an assassin farm. At any given time, that tank probably had 300-500 pea-size and larger ramshorns (yes, in a 10 gallon). I found that the assassins very much preferred the small-medium sized ramshorns, and the largest ones were generally left alone. Meaning the predators controlled the prey by taking out the recruits, not the breeders. Although I didn't see it in action, I'm sure the baby assassins went to town on the thousands of newly-hatched baby ramshorns. 

4. You're not likely to see any baby assassins until a few months after they've hatched. The will crawl down from the eggs to the substrate and hang there for months (make sure you provide plant matter for the adults to lay in, though I have one tank with a hydro pro sponge and they LOVE that for egg placement). I find sand is best. 

5. I've never tried to breed/raise/sustain assassins on anything other than snails, but I suppose anything meaty or protein-rich would work. But I've just never seen the point, ie if you feed a ton of veg or algae pellets or normal fish food, the prey snails will explode, and then so will the assassins.

6. Be aware of predator-prey ratios (ie how large they are). You should literally have dozens if not hundreds of individual prey for each adult assassin snail (more if your prey is the mini ramshorns). Your tank should appear to be exploding with snails, and over time you'll see the substrate begin to be littered with empty shells. Which you'll have to clean out occasionally. 

7. My snail tank was very much a case study in old tank syndrome. The huge number of snails stripped the calcium out of the water and substrate, despite frequent large water changes, dr turtle calcium blocks, and 50% aragonite substrate. pH was always low, but that meant that ammonia was actually ammonium, so not terrible. Fragile system with precarious balance, but it worked. 

8. I'm very short of space, but I'd love to see how it would work for me at a larger scale, eg a 40 or 55 gallon setup. 

9. Currently I still produce a reasonable number of assassins, which my LFS buyers snap up when I bring them in. I basically breed them in a single 40 breeder mostly-cory tank, and it is the dumping ground for all the ramshorns I pull from my other tanks (including my daphnia buckets). No matter how many ramshorns I dump in (mostly small-medium size), the assassins clear them out quickly, and keep making more assassins. I've sold 75 or so in the past couple months, and the numbers in the tank don't appear to be much lower. 

10. This leads to a key in breeding assassins (my opinion): you need lots of breeders. If you start with 2 or 5 or 10, you should wait until your first generation of babies have bred themselves and their babies (your second generation of babies) are grown before you start harvesting/selling. That way you won't undermine your egg production, and your future generations will continue to be abundant. See if you can find a breeder who will give you a good rate on a few dozen to get started (assuming you have the food for them). 

11. Tip for collecting assassins without digging through the substrate: stick a freeze dried cube of tubifex on a fork and place the cube at substrate level. The assassins will race out of their hiding places and congregate there in no time. Easy peasy. 

All of the above is what worked for me, and isn't to say it's the only way to go. Or the only opinion on the table. I've read your posts, you know what you're doing, you got this!! 

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On 5/26/2023 at 11:40 PM, TOtrees said:

@Lennie You're not going to like what I have to say, but I won't let that stop me from saying it. And it's meant to be helpful, truly. 🙂 

1. Assassins take a long time to breed to sellable size, like 4-6 months at least. When you get down to #s 9 & 10 below, you'll see why waiting 9-12 months to start selling might be a better idea.

2. Assassins are huge eaters. If all they eat is snails, you need a huge prey population to sustain them, especially if you want them to breed prolifically (breeding includes well-conditioned adults capable of laying lots of eggs, and large amounts of food available for assassins of all sizes, from basically invisible babies to 1/4" juvies to adult size). 

3. I bred a ton of assassins in a 10 gallon tank that I originally set up to make regular ramshorns, which I had a buyer for at the time. My buyer stopped buying, so I converted my ramshorn farm into an assassin farm. At any given time, that tank probably had 300-500 pea-size and larger ramshorns (yes, in a 10 gallon). I found that the assassins very much preferred the small-medium sized ramshorns, and the largest ones were generally left alone. Meaning the predators controlled the prey by taking out the recruits, not the breeders. Although I didn't see it in action, I'm sure the baby assassins went to town on the thousands of newly-hatched baby ramshorns. 

4. You're not likely to see any baby assassins until a few months after they've hatched. The will crawl down from the eggs to the substrate and hang there for months (make sure you provide plant matter for the adults to lay in, though I have one tank with a hydro pro sponge and they LOVE that for egg placement). I find sand is best. 

5. I've never tried to breed/raise/sustain assassins on anything other than snails, but I suppose anything meaty or protein-rich would work. But I've just never seen the point, ie if you feed a ton of veg or algae pellets or normal fish food, the prey snails will explode, and then so will the assassins.

6. Be aware of predator-prey ratios (ie how large they are). You should literally have dozens if not hundreds of individual prey for each adult assassin snail (more if your prey is the mini ramshorns). Your tank should appear to be exploding with snails, and over time you'll see the substrate begin to be littered with empty shells. Which you'll have to clean out occasionally. 

7. My snail tank was very much a case study in old tank syndrome. The huge number of snails stripped the calcium out of the water and substrate, despite frequent large water changes, dr turtle calcium blocks, and 50% aragonite substrate. pH was always low, but that meant that ammonia was actually ammonium, so not terrible. Fragile system with precarious balance, but it worked. 

8. I'm very short of space, but I'd love to see how it would work for me at a larger scale, eg a 40 or 55 gallon setup. 

9. Currently I still produce a reasonable number of assassins, which my LFS buyers snap up when I bring them in. I basically breed them in a single 40 breeder mostly-cory tank, and it is the dumping ground for all the ramshorns I pull from my other tanks (including my daphnia buckets). No matter how many ramshorns I dump in (mostly small-medium size), the assassins clear them out quickly, and keep making more assassins. I've sold 75 or so in the past couple months, and the numbers in the tank don't appear to be much lower. 

10. This leads to a key in breeding assassins (my opinion): you need lots of breeders. If you start with 2 or 5 or 10, you should wait until your first generation of babies have bred themselves and their babies (your second generation of babies) are grown before you start harvesting/selling. That way you won't undermine your egg production, and your future generations will continue to be abundant. See if you can find a breeder who will give you a good rate on a few dozen to get started (assuming you have the food for them). 

11. Tip for collecting assassins without digging through the substrate: stick a freeze dried cube of tubifex on a fork and place the cube at substrate level. The assassins will race out of their hiding places and congregate there in no time. Easy peasy. 

All of the above is what worked for me, and isn't to say it's the only way to go. Or the only opinion on the table. I've read your posts, you know what you're doing, you got this!! 

These are some great info!

 

Thank you very much.

I don't have a huge population of mini ramshorns in the tub, but it is on an okay level I would say. I've started with 5 assasins, they arrived today. 4 of them has been very active, meanwhile one has not moved, nor I can see any sign of being alive. Also in the bag they are shipped at, two assasins were attached around its shell. I assume it didn't make it, so others were just snacking on it. Maybe, on a very lower chance, they were attempting to mate, but it didn't really seem so. The shell was not smelling bad by any means, but it looks empty too.

 

So I believe I just have 4 adults, coming from very crowded place of assasin snails. So I assume if there is any females, they probably already had a chance to mate in the store with some males. Fingers crossed for some babies 🙂

 

I also read them being slow at reproducing. Then I watched Rachel O Leary's video, and she says they actually breed much faster than people expect them to be, but again not as much as pest snails it seems.

The babies look adorable, I'm excited to see some. Ofc if I was lucky enough to have some females :') 

 

The tub is planted, has floating hornwort, frogbit and water lettuce, lily, echinodorus leopard, anubias barteri, hygrophila difformis, and lucky bamboos I stole from my sister 😄 

The substrate is river sand, and has small river gravel pieces around. It used to help my rabbit snails move around better, as I found pure sand was a struggle for them even tho they also liked burying.

It has some endlers, one male betta and green jelly shrimp. 50liters

image.jpeg.f3f117a6dd4ed9a228af15133327a100.jpeg

Edited by Lennie
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On 5/26/2023 at 11:40 PM, TOtrees said:

11. Tip for collecting assassins without digging through the substrate: stick a freeze dried cube of tubifex on a fork and place the cube at substrate level. The assassins will race out of their hiding places and congregate there in no time. Easy peasy. 

I gave them some freeze dried tubifex but they didn't care at all.

Maybe not hungry :')

My mystery snails would've slurped it all in a sec 😄 

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